THE KOWLOON and Canton Railway (KCRC) plans to build a rail-link from the China border through a west Hong Kong 'corridor' to the territory's container terminals have hit the buffers following accusations that tenders issued by the railway company have not been endorsed by China.
Beijing claims that there has been no agreement for the passenger-freight railway project and that KCRC senior managers have not received permission from the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group to award contracts for detailed plans and surveys. At press time no one from KCRC was available for comment.
The Western Corridor Railway (WCR) development now renamed West Rail is needed according to KCRC officials as the current eastern line is reaching capacity and the new freight line would help relieve congestion both on the busy road border crossings at Lo Wu and Lok Ma Chau but also on roads leading to the container terminals.
As part of the multi-billion dollar plan, a dedicated freight line is planned to link Kwai Chung container terminals to the China border. Currently, there is no rail head at the container terminals and with many of the operators reaching capacity, the rail connection is seen as one way to alleviate congestion at the port, by reducing reliance on trucks moving containers in and out of the terminals.
Currently trucks move containers from Shenzhen across the border through Hong Kong's roads, which One particularly bad bottleneck is on Kwai Chung Road which serves the container terminals. Major roadworks are under way on Route 3 a section of which is elevated over the port road causing additonal problems. Route 3 will connect the border to the new Chek Lap Kok airport, due to open in mid-1998.
KCRC has a freight rail head at Hung Hom from there containers are trucked to Kwai Chung or barged to vessels waiting mid-stream in Hong Kong harbour.
As part of the masterplan all loading and unloading of containers, storage and marshalling will be located away from the Port Rail Terminal (PRT). A Northern Freight Yard (NFY) will be located close to the border where all sorting, storage, rehandling and dispatching will be focused.
At the PRT, final distribution of containers to the different container terminals will be by trucks controlled by KCRC. The plan is for containers to arrive at the port on a just-in-time basis to minimise on-dock container storage and waiting time for trucks, thus relieving congestion. Freight forwarding activities will also be relocated away from the terminal so that consolidation/decon-solidation activities and the storage of empty containers will be performed off-site close to the NFY.
As much of the cargo from China is in breakbulk form, freight will have to be stuffed into containers at the NFY, before loading onto Kwai Chung-bound freight trains. All other breakbulk trains from China, will be separated from container trains and diverted south-bound on the existing
To maximise the efficiency of the shuttle freight trains between the NFY and Kwai Chung, planners have factored in the use of double-stack container trains.
In the long term there are plans to extend the freight line to link-up to Chek Lap Kok airport and also the planned Lantau ports, again to minimise the number of truck journeys across the Tsing Ma bridge.
In the meantime many of the planning and feasibility studies for the overall project, which is primarily focused on building a new passenger line, have been put out to tender.
The intermodal freight/ freight management system feasibility study contract went out to tender on June 1, 1996 and the final tenders are due in on June 30.
The completion date for the feasibility study is July 1997.