Ordinary Gweilo

Today is Rail Merger Day.  The government has engineered a deal whereby the MTR (which used to be government-owned but is now a public company, albeit still controlled by the government), will operate the railway services and manage the property of the KCR (which is still government-owned).  That means that all the rail services in Hong Kong are run by the MTR.  Well, apart from the train that goes round the outside of Disneyland…

The main impact has been that fares have been reduced, with the biggest reduction being for any journey involving interchange between the “KCR” lines and the “MTR” lines.  Predictably, there have complaints that they could have offered bigger reductions, as is often the way in this fine city. 

Some MTR shareholders (notably David Webb) have complained that this is a bad deal for the MTR – mainly because it is now subject to a new formula that is intended to limit fare increases.  There was even the suggestion that people sympathetic to the government bought up MTR shares in order to vote through the proposal. 

My main concern is that it seems as if a lot of time and money have been spent on making changes of the most superficial kind to mark this transition. 

For example, KCR East Rail has been renamed the East Rail Line.  Why not just East Rail, I wonder?  Mong Kong KCR station has become Mong Kok East, to avoid confusion.  Plus there are new colours for the newly renamed lines.

However, one distinct improvement is the new map, which not only shows all the lines, but is also more geographically accurate.  No longer does it appear that Tsim Sha Tsui is a short walk from Wan Chai, as used to be the case on the maps on the MTR trains – though at the other end the New Territories has been compressed to fit in to the space available, so it is not perfect.