The MTR has been handed an HK$8 million (US$1 million) penalty after a signaling system failure caused unprecedented travel chaos to thousands of commuters in October. The fine will trickle down to you — theoretically — in the form of discounts in the coming year.
The incident in October saw the simultaneous breakdown of four of Hong Kong’s major train lines: the Island, Tsuen Wan, Kwun Tong, and Tseung Kwan O.
The commuter turmoil lasted about six hours, paralyzing the city’s public transportation network as MTR platforms swamped with passengers quickly beget similar lines for buses and trams.
According a report submitted by the rail operator to the government yesterday, the fault lay with two interconnected groups of computers that control the signaling systems.
Ming Pao reports that the MTRC’s chief of operations engineering, Tony Lee, explained that not all the lines on the MTR network use the same signaling system equipment — The Tsuen Wan, Island and most of the Kwun Tong line use systems created by France’s Alstom, while the Tseung Kwan O and rest of the Kwun Tong line use ones from Germany-based Siemens.
The Alstom system comprises 25 computers and has been in use since 1996, while the Siemens system has eight sector computers and has been in use since 2001.
Lee explained that both systems are designed to the same signaling system standards, but both have different reset procedures, which are triggered when a certain number of operations have been conducted. While the Alstom computers reset themselves automatically, the Siemens computers have to be manually reset.
Thanks to that, while the Alstom computers reset automatically at 5am on Oct. 16, the Siemens computers kept right on running, causing “an endless loop causing corresponding instability in all 25 Alstom sector computers,” the SCMP reports.
MTRC operations director Adi Lau revealed that of the four lines that failed that day, the Kwun Tong line had the longest recorded breakdown at 114 minutes, followed by Tsuen Wan (89 minutes), Island (77 minutes) and Tseung Kwan O (61 minutes).
Lau said the MTRC would be treating each breakdown as a separate incident on each line, meaning it will pay a HK$2 million (US$255,000) for each line.
The government said in a statement published yesterday that it accepted the outcome of the report, and that the HK$8 million fine will go towards fare concessions for passengers next year.
While it isn’t clear how much lost productivity across the city that day, we’re guessing it was a whole hell of a lot more than HK$8million worth.
Lawmaker Michael Tien had the same idea, and yesterday repeated calls for a review of the fines the MTRC has to pay for service disruptions, adding that the penalty should be related to “loss of productivity” based on the number of passengers that normally use the line where services are hit.
Speaking to reporters at LegCo, Tien who is the chairman of the Legislative Council’s railways subcommittee described the need to reset the system every 10 or so years “a design flaw.”
“Who will remember? Even if they remember to do it, they won’t remember how,” he said.
He accepted that the MTR chaos was “understandable” given that it was unprecedented, but that the MTR won’t be easily forgiven if it happens a second time, RTHK reported.
