Major MTR disruption triggers calls for penalty system review in Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s rail giant and transport authorities have come under pressure to review their penalty mechanism after a train fault caused a seven-hour service disruption, despite industry insiders calling the incident rare.

Lawmaker Gary Zhang Xinyu said on Thursday that the current penalty system for service delays failed to reflect the scale of the disruption and that Wednesday’s incident was severe enough to warrant a fine.

Under the system, the MTR Corporation is fined HK$1 million (US$128,400) for disruptions between 31 minutes and an hour during non-peak hours.

“For example, a journey from Admiralty to Lok Ma Chau was expected to take 45 minutes but extended to 1½ hours as trains only ran every 24 minutes between Sheung Shui and Lok Ma Chau, so it is possible to trigger the penalty,” he told a radio show.

Thousands of passengers were forced to wait on platforms for up to 24 minutes at certain stops on Wednesday afternoon after a five-car engineer’s train sat stationary on the tracks due to a faulty sensor in the crane wagon.

But Zhang said the current penalty system for service delays did not account for the scale of the disruption.