Hong Kong rail giant the MTR Corporation has pledged to upgrade its internet capacity after scores of travellers, many of whom were mainland Chinese, were stuck at a border station struggling to generate their QR code tickets with an overloaded network during the Labour Day “golden week” holiday.
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Passengers at Lok Ma Chau station spent a relatively long time generating their QR code tickets during the rush hours on Friday, the second day of the five-day break, as the mobile data and free Wi-fi at the station could not cope with the huge traffic, according to the railway operator.
“During the peak outbound travel period in the evening, the station has intermittently adopted the arrangement of not requiring passengers to tap their cards to exit the gate between about 9.45pm and 10.30pm to ease the crowd,” the operator said on Saturday.
The MTR Corp said it had already contacted its network provider to step up the mobile data capacity, adding it would also double its Wi-fi capacity.
Pictures posted on social media showed that Lok Ma Chau station was fully packed with hundreds of travellers on Friday, with some sharing their frustration online.
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“I expected that there would be many people during the Labour Day holiday, but I did not anticipate the network shutdown. It felt like losing your phone and being unable to do anything,” a user said on the mainland social media platform, RedNote.