Boost Hong Kong’s Airport Express ridership by improving connectivity: lawmakers

Lawmakers have proposed increasing the city’s Airport Express ridership by connecting the service to the high-speed rail and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, and by maintaining cheaper fares to the AsiaWorld-Expo.

Lawmaker Gary Zhang Xinyu suggested on a radio programme on Wednesday that links with the two sites would help increase passenger flows by encouraging people from mainland China to fly from Hong Kong.

The lawmaker’s suggestion follows the MTR Corporation’s proposal on Tuesday to raise Airport Express fares for the first time in eight years, with an average increase of 9.4 per cent.

The company said the increase was to ensure “a sustainable income” to meet increasing operational costs and investments required to renew railway assets, adding that there was a need to adjust fares to break even and maintain “high-quality service”.

“We want to make it more convenient for passengers to transfer to the Airport Express from the West Kowloon high-speed rail station, so that we can achieve transfers between railway systems and aeroplanes,” Zhang said.

“We hope to attract more friends from mainland provinces to come to Hong Kong using high-speed rail, then transfer to the Airport Express, where they could then fly internationally from Hong Kong.”

“We actually have the conditions to do this geographically,” he said, adding that authorities could consider using autonomous vehicles to link up the two stations.