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

"We will use floating slab track at stations to prevent vibrations being transmitted through the station to any existing or future properties--we will build 40,000 apartments at stations on behalf of the government," Jesudason explained. "Floating slab track will also be used in tunnel sections beneath buildings."

New Trains

The Japanese IKK consortium of Itochu, Kinki Sharyo, and Kawasaki has a contract to supply 250 cars of a new design for KCRC. Of these, 154 cars will be for West Rail formed into seven-car trains. KCRC plans to extend the trains to eight and eventually nine-car sets as traffic builds up. The remaining 96 cars will be formed into 12-car sets for East Rail. Each car will have room for 335 passengers compared with only 313 passengers in an MTR car.

The 130km/h trains are expected to average 200,000km a year. KCRC has set a reliability target of 2 million car-km mean distance between failures causing more than 2 minutes delay. Any single failure must not result in a delay or more than 2 minutes. The exterior noise target is 81 dB(A) at 25m on open and ballasted track. The interior noise target is 70 dB(A), except in first-class cars where it is 68 dB(A). Energy absorption collapsible zones will be provided to minimise impact to passengers during a collision.

The trains will have liquid crystal displays to provide passengers with real-time information and possibly commercials. CCTV will be installed in each car so that the driver can observe any problems. The driver will also have a monitor in the cab to observe passengers boarding and alighting at stations.

The design for the new trains will be finalised in August. Delivery should start in April 2001. The trains will be tested on the Shatin Racecourse loop on East Rail, part of which will be equipped with Seltrac.

Further extensions to West Rail originally called for a northern link to Lo Wu on East Rail and a second border crossing at Lok Ma Chau, a rail link to the container terminal in Kowloon, and a loop at the southern end via West Kowloon and Tsim Sha Tsui to Hung Horn, the present terminal of East Rail. KCRC is now rethinking some of these proposals. It favours a direct link from the container terminal to East Rail at Tai Wai as East Rail has spare capacity and this would be cheaper than the northern extension. The Lok Ma Chau link and the first stage of the southern loop are now part of three planned East Rail extensions (see panel).

                         WEST RAIL PHASE 1 FUNDING
Cost      $HK billions Source of Funds   $HK billions
Capital           43.4 KCRC Debt                 10.9
Land               7.0 KCRC Funds                11.8
Financing          1.3 Government equity         29.0
Total             51.7 Total                     51.7
                          WEST RAIL PHASE 1 DATA
Viaduct                         13.4km 44%
Bored tunnel                     9.0km 30%
Enclosed structure               3.2km 10%
Cut-and-cover tunnel             2.5km  8%
Surface                          2.4km  8%
Total length                    30.5km
Interchanges with MTR                    2
Interchanges with Tuen Mun LRT           4
Non-interchange stations                 3