West Rail On Schedule To Open In Late 2003 - Kowloon Canton Railway Corp.'s West Rail in Hong Kong

International Railway Journal, March, 2000 by David Briginshaw

Construction is in full swing of Hong Kong's latest mega rail project, Kowloon Canton Railway Corporation's (KCRC) $US 6.6 billion West Rail phase one which is scheduled to open at the end of 2003.

PHASE one of West Rail will be 30.5km long and is designed to provide the first rail connection between the rapidly-growing north-western New Territories and Kowloon. When West Rail opens in December 2003 it is expected to carry 340,000 passengers a day, rising to 500,000 by 2011.

"About one-third of Hong Kong's population live in the New Territories, but this proportion will increase to 40%," Mr Ian Thoms, director of West Rail with KCRC, told IRJ in Hong Kong. "The total population of Hong Kong is expected to exceed 8 million by 2011 (compared with about 6.6 million today) because of immigration from the rest of China, but the north-western New Territories will be the fastest growing area as it will grow by around 70% from 800,000 to 1.3 million. Most of the extra half million people will live in Tin Shui Wai."

West Rail will revolutionise travel between the north-western New Territories and Kowloon. At present, buses are the only form of public transport linking the two areas. West Rail will take just 30 minutes from Tuen Mun to Nam Cheong in Kowloon, and trains will operate from 05.30 to 01.00 the following morning. KCRC will open the line with 20 seven-car trains/hour/direction. This will gradually be stepped up to reach the maximum design capacity of 34 nine-car trains/h/direction.

There will be four interchanges with the Tuen Mun light rail network in the northwestern New Territories, and two interchanges with the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) in Kowloon. The latter comprise a connection with the Tsuen Wan Line at Mei Foo and one with the Tung Chung Line (part of the Airport Railway) at Nam Cheong.

The original cost of West Rail was estimated at $HK 64 billion ($US 8.2 billion). However, KCRC has managed to reduce the cost by almost 20% to $HK 51.7 billion through a value engineering exercise, a lower than expected rate of inflation, and a resultant reduction in financing charges due to lower borrowings.

KCRC was first keen to confirm that it would be possible to design a signalling and train control system that would meet its requirement for minimum headways of 90 seconds (to enable it to recover from delays) and normal service headways of 105 seconds to achieve 33 to 34 trains/h/direction. "We paid 10 signalling contractors to demonstrate to us that they could meet our specification," Thorns explained. Eventually, KCRC whittled down the bidders to three before awarding a $HK 383 billion contract to Alcatel, Canada. Alcatel will install its Seltrac communications-based moving block signalling system, which was first introduced on the Vancouver Sky Train in 1986, and more recently on London's Docklands Light Railway and Kuala Lumpur's Putra light metro.

Seltrac will enable KCRC to achieve its 90-second headways (compared with 150-second headways on the existing East Rail line). "As patronage grows in future, we can operate trains at more frequent intervals instead of running longer trains," says KCRC. The automatic train supervision and regulation system in the control centre will enable train punctuality to be maintained with an allowance of 5 seconds. Seltrac provides cab signalling and obviates the need of lineside signals. It will he possible to interface Seltrac with the ATP system on East Rail.

Once KCRC was satisfied that the signalling would provide the desired line capacity, it was then possible to revise its plans for train length. It decided nine-car trains would be sufficient rather than 12. "This meant we could shorten station platforms which solved some engineering problems we faced with 12-car trains," Thoms explained. "Some station platforms would have had reverse curves, which is a particular problem with platform screen doors. We were looking at special plates to bridge the gap between the train and the platform edge. Now, virtually all platforms will be straight. Shorter platforms also obviated the need for two concourses at some stations. The overall saving was about $HK 3 billion."

The original budget for West Rail included an allowance for cost escalation. But this is no longer needed as there is virtually no inflation in Hong Kong at the moment. KCRC is also benefiting from the recent Asian economic downturn. Contracts have been awarded at highly competitive prices. "In some cases, prices are lower than those for the Airport Railway project," Thoms revealed. Land prices are lower than expected which meant the budget for purchasing land could be cut from $HK 8 billion to $HK 7 billion (see table). All these savings, mean that the financing charge for West Rail has been cut from $HK 5 billion to $HK 1.3 billion. It was originally planned to raise $HK 25 billion from the money markets, but this has been reduced to $HK 10.9 billion.

Of course, a tight grip has to be maintained throughout a project if it is to be completed on time and within budget, as Thoms explained. "I believe in a 'thin and mean' philosophy for project management. Good in-house expertise is critical. Consultants should only be used to provide specialist knowledge such as crashworthiness. The creeping elegance syndrome is anathema to good project management and must be avoided at all costs because it promotes change which leads to cost and time overruns. The operational service objectives and the needs of the end user have to be well defined."