Hong Kong MTR bosses could punish supplier of signalling system blamed for train crash near Central station

Hong Kong rail bosses could punish the French supplier of the new signal system on the city’s subway network, after it was blamed for a train crash.

But a top designer on the system denied the accident on the MTR had anything to do with a software failure, as rail bosses have suggested.

On Monday, two trains collided near Central station during an overnight trial run of the new system, derailing one carriage and injuring a driver. No passengers were on board.

Tsuen Wan line services between Central and Admiralty, two stations at the heart of the city’s business district, remained suspended. The MTR Corporation said a software problem in the new system could have been to blame.

Speaking on a radio programme on Tuesday, the corporation’s head of operations engineering, Dr Tony Lee Kar-yun, said software supplier Thales could be punished for the crash.

“We will negotiate with them in accordance with the terms in the contract,” Lee said, without elaborating.

The MTR Corp board was scheduled to meet that afternoon to discuss its response.

Thales, in a joint venture with fellow French company Alstom, was awarded the contract in 2015 to install a system known as SelTrac CBTC on seven lines, for HK$3.3 billion. The Tsuen Wan line was to be the system’s first roll-out.

While the new system was still being tested in Hong Kong, it was already up and running on Singapore’s MRT.

In late 2017, two trains collided on the city state’s East West MRT line, injuring 38 passengers.

The accident was also said to have been caused by a problem in the software’s design. Singapore’s Land Transport Authority said the system had disabled a safety feature which maintained a safe distance between trains.

The authority later said Thales had fixed the design to prevent similar issues, and had upgraded related track equipment.

Asked if there were similarities between the two accidents, Lee said: “Their mode of operation and this problem we’ve encountered today … are different.”

‘No rush to roll out crash-linked signal system on MTR,’ city chief says

While Lee did not go into specifics, one notable difference was that the MRT had both the old and new signalling systems running in parallel, controlling different sections of the railway, at the time of the accident.

Meanwhile on Tuesday morning, at the Asia-Pacific Rail conference in Hong Kong, Mihai Lungu, principal design authority for Thales Canada, denied the signal system’s failure had anything to do with its software design.

“No, I don’t think so ... But I can’t comment any longer,” he said when asked whether the software had led to the smash. “I feel sorry for the incident.”

That was despite the MTR Corp saying on Monday Thales’ own Toronto lab had identified the same software issue in a computer simulation after the crash.

Lungu said his firm would help with the crash investigation and his team of experts had already arrived in Hong Kong.

Pro-government legislator Michael Tien Puk-sun said he had lost faith in Thales, citing its involvement in two train crashes.

“The biggest issue is the public’s confidence in this company working on all the signalling systems,” Tien, who was chair of the KCR network before it merged with the MTR, said.

He said the government should consider bringing in a new contractor to finish the job.

The new signalling system on the Tsuen Wan line was supposed to go online late last year. But that was pushed back to the second half of this year before Monday’s accident.

The MTR Corp said the commencement would probably be delayed further, as all tests had been suspended.