Train services between Hong Kong’s Tung Chung and Sunny Bay stations will close two hours early on October 26 due to major track diversion work related to the route’s extension project.
The MTR Corporation said on Monday that the services for the stops on the Tung Chung line would finish early that day, with the last train from Hong Kong station to set off at 11.07pm and the last one from Tung Chung to depart at 11.01pm.
All services will resume as normal the next day, while the airport express services will be unaffected.
“It is one of the largest diversion works by the company in the past decade,” said Lesly Leung Po-po, the rail operator’s project manager for the Tung Chung line extension.
The corporation urged travellers to plan their journeys in advance. Free shuttle buses would be provided to fill service gaps, it added.
Four rail turnouts for changing lines will be installed along new and existing tracks and will take four to five hours to complete, before a new signalling system and additional equipment are installed.
Leung said the early service suspension was because the work would exceed the company’s usual nightly two-hour window for repair and maintenance.
She added that the rail operator would decide the arrangements for the three other installations based on how the work progressed on October 26.
Ben Lui Gon-yee, the MTR Corp’s airport segment chief, said few passengers were likely to be affected by the move.
“Judging from past passenger flow, we expect the amount of affected passengers will be quite small,” he said, adding that the temporary buses would be running at intervals of two to three minutes on the day.
Construction work for the extension started in May of last year and is scheduled to finish in 2029.
The cost of the extension project was estimated to be HK$19.5 billion (US$2.5 billion) in December 2020, with the government to offer HK$15.5 billion in funding for the initiative.
The line extension will add about 2.5km (1.5 miles) of rail and tunnel to the existing Tung Chung route, which connects Hong Kong station in Central and Tung Chung on Lantau Island.
The first 1.2km-long section will be between Sunny Bay and Tung Chung, with the new station set to be built in the Tung Chung East reclamation area.
The other 1.3km-long section will be from the existing railway tunnel at Tung Chung station to the new Tung Chung West station near the Yat Tung public housing estate.
The Tung Chung line extension is the first among the MTR Corp’s various new railway projects.
The arrangement follows a similar service suspension on July 28 to allow for upgrade work along sections of the Kwun Tong line.
The suspension affected services at Prince Edward, Mong Kok, Yau Ma Tei and Ho Man Tin stations, with the company mobilising 500 engineers and contractors to complete the work in 28 hours and 1,000 staff members to help commuters.
Lawmaker Michael Tien Puk-sun, who is also a member of the Legislative Council, expressed confidence in the arrangement and praised the MTR Corporation for maintaining smooth operations during the suspension of services on the Kwun Tong line in July.
He attributed the expansion project’s hefty price tag to complex re-routing and the construction of multiple stations, but said the cost would not be passed on to passengers as the government had provided a HK$18.36 billion subsidy to the operator through property rights grants to offset those costs.
“The MTR Corporation is a publicly-listed company, and it would have calculated that the additional investment will pay off in the long run through increased ridership and fare revenue from the growing population in Tung Chung,” he said.
“So even though the extension project is exorbitantly expensive, the costs will definitely not be passed on to passengers.”
