Kowloon–Canton Railway
The Kowloon–Canton Railway (KCR; Chinese: 九廣鐵路; Cantonese Yale: Gáugwóng Titlouh) was a railway network in Hong Kong. It was owned and operated by the Kowloon–Canton Railway Corporation (KCRC) until 2007. Rapid transit services, a light rail system, feeder bus routes within Hong Kong, and intercity passenger and freight train services to China on the KCR network, have been operated by the MTR Corporation since 2007.
| Kowloon–Canton Railway (KCR) | |
|---|---|
| Overview | |
| Locale | New Territories, New Kowloon, Kowloon |
| Transit type |
|
| Number of lines | 4 (3 railway lines, 1 light rail system)
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| Number of stations | 33 railway stations, 68 light rail stations |
| Daily ridership | about 1.49 million (2006) |
| Operation | |
| Began operation | 1 October 1910 |
| Ended operation | 1 December 2007 (became a part of the MTR system) |
| Operator(s) | KCR Corporation (1982–2007) / MTR Corporation since 2007 |
| Technical | |
| System length | 35 km (22 mi) |
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge |
| Kowloon–Canton Railway | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 九廣鐵路 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 九广铁路 | ||||||||||
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While still owned by its previous operator, the KCR network (which is wholly owned by the Hong Kong Government through the KCRC) has been operated by the MTR Corporation Limited under a 50-year, extensible, service concession since 2 December 2007. The two companies have merged their local metro lines into one unified fare system. Immediately after the merger, steps were taken to integrate the network into the same fare system as the MTR, and gates between the two networks were removed in several stages in 2008. Although the MTR Corporation is a listed company, the Hong Kong Government is the controlling shareholder with a stake of about 75%.
In 2006, the local KCR local passenger train network (i.e. intercity services excluded) recorded an annual ridership of 544 million.