Hong Kong, China resume high speed railway services after 3 years

HONG KONG: China on Sunday resumed the high-speed railway services connecting the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and the mainland after nearly three years of suspension due to Covid-19 curbs.

At 7:03 a.m. local time, a high-speed train left the Hong Kong West Kowloon Station for Shenzhen, the first of such trains since the pandemic disrupted the cross-border bullet train services, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Liao Jun, a student from Jiangxi Province who studies in Hong Kong, was excited to catch the first train back to the mainland.

"Today will be a day to remember. The resumption of high-speed rail services is of great significance to the overall connectivity between the HKSAR and the mainland," he said.

At the Shenzhen North railway station, high-speed trains restarted to travel south to Hong Kong, with many Hong Kongers working in Shenzhen finding the service a convenient and economical choice to travel back home during weekends.

China Railway Guangzhou Group said that it will arrange an average of 38.5 pairs of high-speed trains on a daily basis running from stations in Guangzhou and Shenzhen to the Hong Kong West Kowloon Station at the initial stage of service resumption.

It would optimise the operation plan in the future according to passenger flow and promote the orderly recovery of cross-border high-speed rail services, the Group said.