Overnight repair times limit track checks, MTR says
The rail operator has said conducting more ultrasonic inspections on tracks might prove difficult given the limited nightly time window for maintenance, as lawmakers grilled the firm over a broken section that caused a day of service delays.
Tony Lee Kar-yun, operations and innovation director at the MTR Corporation, also told a Legislative Council railway subcommittee yesterday the firm had sent the cracked track section to a laboratory for study and to prevent any repeat incidents.
The damage was uncovered on Thursday morning at a melding position along a line near Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station, causing disruptions to the Tsuen Wan line service during the Ching Ming Festival, also known as tomb-sweeping day.
Services between Central and Tsuen Wan were delayed by 15 to 20 minutes for a short period that morning, with trains also travelling at reduced speeds between Tsim Sha Tsui and Jordan.
Lee told lawmakers that engineers had replaced the damaged section at around 11.30pm on Thursday, ensuring services could fully resume yesterday.
“The components removed last night will be sent to the laboratory for further analysis to see what understanding and information we can glean, so we can step up analysis and ensure such incidents can be minimised,” he said.
The operations and innovation director also said engineers currently conducted visual inspections of track sections every three days when the rail service stopped for the night.
A vehicle with ultrasonic equipment also checked each track section every two weeks to uncover any metal fatigue, while more in-depth physical inspections took place every four to six months.
Lee said real-time detection methods were also used.
An MTR Corp document in 2014 said the testing vehicle was introduced in January 2013 to ensure faster checks. Technicians also conduct dye penetrant tests two or three times a year, it said.
Lawmaker Michael Tien Puksun, a former chairman of the
Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, pressed Lee to increase the frequency of ultrasonic checks by tapping into the company’s additional resources and new technology.
Last year, the rail operator pledged to invest HK$65 billion over a five-year period in maintaining railway assets, while also using innovation and technology to improve standards after a string of incidents that year led to service disruptions.
“One hairline crack can widen quite a lot in two weeks, you should know it well,” Tien said. “Tell me if you can make it once a week now. It’s HK$65 billion! Where’s the money been spent?”
Lee said meeting such a demand was difficult, but stopped short of saying whether running more ultrasonic inspections was a possibility.
“Of course, I hope to run the checks every night, but there are practical difficulties because many other works also require the precious time of overnight maintenance hours,” he said.
“Regarding the biweekly check, following our staff’s removal of the track [section] last night, we will conduct an in-depth analysis of all past data to study how to ensure that it does not happen again.”
Lawmakers also pushed the MTR Corp to speed up works to install platform doors at the ground-level stations along the East Rail line, the city’s oldest operating route, after two visually impaired passengers at Fo Tan station fell onto the tracks last Saturday. The project began last May. The work at Fo Tan station has yet to be completed.
Lee said it was difficult to accelerate the work at some stations, especially those at Lo Wu and Mong Kok East, which did not have straight platforms. The target completion date for the project remains 2025.
HK$65b
The amount the MTR Corp pledged to invest last year to maintain railway assets and improve standards over a five-year period