Train crashed in Hong Kong due to (CBTC) signal issues

straitstimes.com

14 pointskenips3 comments

Hong Kong's MTR has consistently been the most well run private transport service I have had the privilege of riding. (I could be mistaken, the MTR is privatised, right? I do know all the buses are.)

The only surprise I read was that they consider the CBTC signal system as outdated and in need of replacement. In fact, it might've been here where I read an article about how New York (or perhaps Chicago) should switch to CBTC, but can't for a number of legacy reasons.

Hong Kong MTR is only sort of privatized. It is operated by a publicly traded company, but the government owns a 75% stake.

Most of the Hong Kong MTR lines use an older implementation of CBTC which doesn't support fullly unattended operation, which is why they are looking to upgrade. New York is in the process of implementing CBTC on some lines, but their implementation won't support fully unattended operation either.

The primary motivation was to switch from a fixed-block system to a moving block system, to reduce the headway from the current 114 seconds down to 95 seconds, or a 16% increase in capacity. I can't find an English language source for the figures right now, but they are widely quoted in the local media.

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