Safety Of MTR's New Signalling System Questioned

The safety of a new signalling system the MTR is planning to implement has come under question after a train collision during a trial on Monday, leading to the suspension of services on the busy harbour crossover link between Central and Admiralty.

The chairman of Legco's transport panel, Ben Chan, questioned why the system's anti-crash mechanism didn't work.

He said the incident has greatly harmed public confidence in the new signalling system, and the railways subcommittee is arranging a special meeting to discuss the matter.

Democratic party lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting said the incident showed that the signalling system has failed. He said he is concerned that the MTR will have to delay its task of replacing the signalling system, and he is worried that services on other lines might also be affected.

He said any delay in replacing the ageing signalling system currently used by the rail operator will lead to more problems for MTR in future.

Roundtable lawmaker Michael Tien, who is a former chairman of the Kowloon–Canton Railway, said he was shocked by the incident. He said it was lucky that the incident happened during a test-run.

He said he understands that both trains were being controlled by the new signalling system, and there wasn't any manual override.

Tien said the crash could either have been caused by a fault in the signalling system or human error.

Lawmaker Kwok Ka-ki said he will raise an urgent question at Wednesday's Legco meeting about the crash.