In The Straits Time article, "Dubbed 'the best in class': 6 things about Hong Kong's MTR railway system", Khaw (as quoted in Lee, 2015) commended on Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) and approved that its standards should be classified as the basic criterion for other countries. Lee mentioned certain facts about MTR in the article. Hong Kong's railway pricing was the highest among railway countries and the track covered a distance of 221km. Lee stated the MTR encountered significantly small number of minor delays and 37 per cent of MTRC's () earnings were devoted to rail track maintenance. Lee remarked that MTRC was well known for their highly efficient manpower and crowd controlling measurements such as driving a vehicle equipped with ultrasonic techniques that performed routine checks on rail track every couple of days for faults that were undetectable by human eyes. While there are many aspects that SMRT should learn from Hong Kong's MTR, it should not be designated as the 'best in class'.
Hong Kong MTR has very poor management on the passengers because it lacks enforcement on passengers' travelling ethics. According to Blundy (2016), a passenger was seen hanging a hammock on a train to take a nap. Fortunately, MTR staff were called upon to stop the man from posting further disturbance to the surrounding passengers. Although the train system is well known for their efficiency, such example has shown the poor management of it. Although Singapore's SMRT is not as efficient as MTR, SMRT has better management on their travelers. There was no similar case of passengers taking nap on hammock in the train. The management of MTR needs to implement stricter rules for the passengers to prevent unnecessary collision and crowding in the station. Passengers alighting on specific stations have the priority to exit the train first before boarding of other passengers. During peak hours, passengers tend to force their way in before allowing passengers to alight because the entering passengers wish to take up empty seats, resulting in overcrowding within the door premises and unnecessary collisions among each other. The train management crews should control the situation so that they can provide an open path for the passengers to alight without anybody in the way and allowing the boarding passengers to enter in a orderly manner. This was suggested in the article "13 bad habits people do at the MTR"(n.d.).
Hong Kong's MTR has poor management on problem situations because it lacks advanced technologies to deal with these situations. A recent article "MTR slammed for poor handling of train service failure" claimed that 100,000 city workers were stranded in the East Kowloon region due to a power glitch in the train service. The workers took more than an hour to look for the reason behind the glitch without any technologies. MTR needed to ratify more technologies so that it could resolve problems in a shorter time and more efficient way. Khaw (2015) also commented that trains of MTR reach stations every two minutes. The consequence of the train delay could be huge if the similar accident happens again. For an efficient rail system like MTR, it is understandable that it intends to increase the passenger's fares to earn more revenues. In return, the passengers expect MTR to improve on its system as well as meeting the basic needs of the users. Thus, the dissatisfaction of the passengers grows when MTR takes a long time to resolve problems as they feel that the rail system should have made more preventive measures or solutions to uphold their reputation as a fast and efficient system.
Although MTR has been reputed as one of the best rail way systems in the world, it should not be designated as the best instead. Being the best is not just about being efficient in normal situations but also being decisive in critical situations. It should improve on its current standard in management of passengers and problem situations to convince the world that it can be the best.
References
Blundy, R(2016, Apr 16). 10 strangest things to happen on Hong Kong's MTR. (2016). South China Morning Post. Retrieved, September 22, 2017 from http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1936345/10-strangest-things-happen-hong-kongs-mtr
Lee, M.K (2015, Oct 29). Dubbed 'the best in class', 6 things to know about Hong Kong's MTR. (2015). The Straits Times. Retrieved September 15, 2017 from http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/dubbed-the-best-in-class-6-things-about-hong-kongs-mtr-rail-system
MTR slammed for poor handling of train service failure. (2017). Ejinsight. Retrieved, September 23, 2017 from http://www.ejinsight.com/20170412-mtr-slammed-for-poor-handling-of-train-service-failure
13 bad habits people do at the MTR. (N.D.). Retrieved, September 23, 2017 from https://expats.hk/273-14-bad-habits-people-do-at-the-mtr.html
Edited 05 Oct 2017
Edited 09 Oct 2017
Edited 12 Oct 2017
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