Seriously peeved passengers were demanding an explanation today after the MTR basically broke down, leading to delays described as “unprecedented”.
Articulating the collective call for an answer, Transport Secretary Frank Chan said the government would press MTR to promptly reveal the cause of the chaos, which brought the city’s transport network to a near standstill.
“Basically we have to know what actually happened in the very first place, and then we have to appreciate whether or not they have been acting promptly to help resolve their traffic service,” Chan said, appearing on an RTHK radio program.
Simultaneous “signalling failures” on three major routes — the Tsuen Wan, Island, and Kwun Tong lines — plunged the morning into commuter madness with delays of 40 minutes and trains crawling through stations at intervals of up to 15 minutes.
While crowds amassed in stations, the overspill hit buses, ferries and other transport services, with some delays lasting for six hours.
As of this afternoon, services were slowly limping back to normal after the MTR announced that they completed a temporary fix to the signalling system.
No official explanation has been given by the MTR as to what happened, but according to a tweet this morning by MTR Service update — an account that crowdsources updates from MTR staff and passengers on train delays — engineers are investigating a power supply problem at Tsing Yi Operations Control Centre.
Engineers are investigating whether the power supply problem at Tsing Yi Operations Control Centre prevented the normal operations of train management computers
Station staff are now dispatching trains on by one via backup control panel
and no … https://t.co/YX17qg5mrr
— MTR Service Update (@mtrupdate) October 15, 2018
The fault, according to the tweet, “prevented normal operations of train management computers.”
Given the chorus of criticism, they might have to do better than vague technical jargon.
Among those demanding action, was Civic Party lawmaker Tanya Chan, who urged the MTR to stop work to upgrade the network’s signalling system, something the transport provider has been doing at night/.
According to RTHK, she noted the work had lead to an increase in glitches and should be reviewed to find the reasons why faults were occurring.
This was echoed by Michael Tien, chairman of LegCo’s railways subcommittee, who said he suspected the glitches were related to a signalling system upgrade along the Tsuen Wan line.
Tien also called for a review of the fines the MTR corporation has to pay for service disruptions, saying the penalty should be related to “loss of productivity” based on the number of passengers that normally use the line where services are hit.
Democratic party lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting, meanwhile, said the MTR needed to increase the number of people working on the signalling system.
And, in remarks almost identical to her much-criticized response to the travel chaos caused by typhoon Mangkhut, Chief Executive Carrie Lam appealed for employers to “be more understanding” of staff who didn’t get to their desks because of the delays.
In the absence of an official response, commuters took out their frustration in a Hong Kong kinda way: photoshopping the hell out of everything.
Building on some of the impressive work done by netizens in the wake of Typhoon Mangkhut, several apocalyptic-looking film posters appeared online capturing the atmosphere of this morning’s crush.
The new releases include instant classics such as Going to Work 2, a sequel to the numbrous Going to Work posters that came out after Mangkhut.
Enjoy.
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