The Tseung Kwan O line stoppage began at the start of the evening rush hour, sending tens of thousands of passengers struggling to find alternative transport following an apparent short circuit in overhead cables.
Speaking at a subcommittee meeting focusing on railway matters, Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan said the government is highly concerned and disappointed over the incident.
The MTR Corp, she noted, would therefore give passengers a 50 percent discount on rides on a special fare day – in addition to improving its services.
“The MTR is the public’s main means of transportation,” Chan told lawmakers.
“I hope the MTR Corporation understands that the greater its capacity, the greater its responsibility.
“The Transport and Logistics Bureau has already told the MTR to submit a report on Thursday’s incident within a month – and to review the workings and resilience of its rail network – and how it responds to emergencies,” she added.
MTR managing director Jeny Yeung again apologised for the incident, saying affected passengers would get extra reward points on its app.
“We will seriously review and improve our incident response capacity and enhance information dissemination… to inform passengers of the time needed for repair and to allow them to better plan their trips,” she said in a response to lawmakers who had lashed out over repeated incidents in the past few months.
“We’ll also continue to introduce suitable innovative technologies to enhance the reliability of railway operations.”
Several lawmakers noted that the latest incident reflected “serious inadequacies” in the MTRC’s maintenance work and emergency response capability.
The fare cut came under a penalty mechanism that requires the MTRC to increase the amount of the compensation exponentially the longer the service suspension lasts.
The MTR Corp is on track to invest a total of HK$65 billion to maintain its railway assets, while also making better use of technology to improve maintenance standards following a string of incidents.
Besides the Tseung Kwan O service outage, there were two other disruptions in February and April.
The latest Tseung Kwan O incident occurred just one day after the MTRC said it has entered a “very exciting growth period” with multiple investment projects amounting to over HK$100 billion to expand its services.
