Tsuen Wan line immersed tube

The Harbour Crossing Tunnel is a 1.4-kilometre (1,500 yd) dual-track railway, reinforced concrete, immersed tube tunnel across Victoria Harbour.

Not to be confused with Cross-Harbour Tunnel or Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel.

Harbour Crossing Tunnel
A plaque in Charter station commemorating the 1980 opening of the entire Modified Initial System.
Overview
LocationVictoria Harbour
Coordinates22.2878°N 114.1721°E / 22.2878; 114.1721
StatusActive
SystemTsuen Wan line (MTR)
CrossesVictoria Harbour (Chung Mun strait)
StartTsim Sha Tsui
EndAdmiralty
Operation
ConstructedKumagai Gumi
Opened12 February 1980 (1980-02-12)
OwnerMTR Corporation
OperatorMTR Corporation
TrafficRail
Technical
Design engineerPer Hall Consultants
Length1.4 km
No. of tracksDouble
Track gauge1,432 mm (4 ft 8+3⁄8 in)
Electrified1.5 kV DC
An entrance/exit of the Admiralty station on the southern end of the tunnel
The platforms of the Tsim Sha Tsui station on the northern end of the tunnel

Connecting Kowloon and the City of Victoria in the former British dependent territory of Hong Kong, its construction by Kumagai Gumi[1] commenced in 1976.[2]

Specifications

With its deepest point at 24.24 m (79.5 ft), the binocular sections[3] comprises 14 one-hundred-metre (110 yd)-long segments cast in a basin in Chai Wan.[4][5][6][7][8] A specially designed barge, constructed for Kumagai Gumi by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, arrived in Hong Kong in February 1977 to help form the seabed alignment and thereafter lay the tunnel segments into place.[9]

History

First proposed as early as 1967[10] in a study commissioned by the government in 1966,[11] it was the first railway tunnel to cross the Victoria Harbour and also the first subsea railway tunnel in the territory. It was the second fixed crossing to cross the harbour, after the vehicular Cross Harbour Tunnel opened in 1972 as part of the territory's Route 1. The pair of stations on both ends of the tunnel are, respectively, Tsim Sha Tsui and Admiralty. To the north of Tsim Sha Tsui is a cut-and-cover and bored tunnel through Kowloon beneath Nathan Road towards its junction with Boundary Street and onwards through Bishop Hill to Shek Kip Mei.

The structural completion of the tunnel was marked on 26 March 1979 by a celebratory walk-through and breaking-open of a barrel of sake.[12]

Upon its opening in 1980, it was part of the Modified Initial System of the territory's MTR. The full Modified Initial System was opened on 12 February 1980 by Princess Alexandra, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. She also rode the inaugural train through the immersed tube beneath Victoria Harbour to Chater station, which was renamed Central station in 1985.[13][14][15] In 1982 the tunnel became part of the network's Tsuen Wan line, when this new line took over the southernmost part of the Modified Initial System.

Patronage

It has been heavily used in terms of ridership as soon as it entered service. Between 1988 and 1993, a surcharge was imposed on passengers through the tunnel along with Jordan and Tsim Sha Tsui on the "Nathan Road corridor" in the morning peak on weekdays[16][17][18] in order to bring the pphpd level under 75,000.[19] Passengers were encouraged to use the Eastern Harbour Crossing (EHC), opened in 1989 to connect Kwun Tong and Quarry Bay stations of the MTR. Fare adjustment machines were installed along the passageways between the two levels of platforms at Quarry Bay, the interchange station between the Kwun Tong and Island lines, to identify passengers who took the EHC to cross the harbour. The Transport Department, under the Transport Branch, also commissioned KMB to operate a new bus route, numbered 300, through the neighbouring Cross-Harbour Tunnel.[20] The MTR service across Eastern Harbour Crossing would go on to be congested too in the mid-1990s.[21]

See also

References
  1. "Giant shapes HK". South China Morning Post. 23 December 1993. Archived from the original on 21 September 2021. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
  2. "Work starts on MTR tunnel". South China Morning Post. 9 September 1976. p. 6.
  3. MTR Corporation Limited. "An historical picture showing the pre-cast units of first cross-harbour rail tunnel between Tsim Sha Tsui and Admiralty stations when it was under construction in 1977". Archived from the original on 6 November 2021. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  4. Lo, Joseph Y C; Maunsell AECOM (28 March 2008). "The State-of-Art Technology for Immersed Tube Tunnel in Hong Kong and Korea" (PDF). psdas.gov.hk. Archived from [psdas.gov.hk:80/content/doc/2007-1-02/Seminar1_04%2520-%25202007-1-02.pdf the original] (PDF) on 16 May 2017. Retrieved 29 September 2021. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  5. Lo, Joseph Y C; Tsang, C K; Maunsell AECOM (28 March 2008). "State-of-Art Technology for Immersed Tube Tunnel in Hong Kong and Korea; pp. 46, 47, 51" (PDF). psdas.gov.hk.
  6. Wong, Marcus (16 May 2017). "Underwater tunnels of the Hong Kong MTR". Checkerboard Hill. Archived from the original on 18 September 2021. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
  7. Morris, Martin; Yang, Morgan W. W.; Tsang, Chor Kin; Hu, Alan Y. M.; Shut, Dunson S. C. (1 November 2016). "An overview of subsea tunnel engineering in Hong Kong, chapter 2.2 on p.2". Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Civil Engineering. 169 (6): 9–15. doi:10.1680/jcien.15.00073. ISSN 0965-089X. Archived from the original on 29 September 2021. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  8. Choi, Barry (26 January 1977). "Tubes for MTR's harbour tunnel". South China Morning Post. p. 8.
  9. "MTR barge arrives". South China Morning Post. 24 February 1977. p. 1.
  10. Freeman, Fox, Wilbur Smith & Associates (1967). Hong Kong Mass Transport Study (Report).{{cite report}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. Rail Mass Transit for Developing Countries: Proceedings of the Conference Organised by the Institution of Civil Engineers, and Held in London on 9–10 October 1989 Archived 5 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Thomas Telford, 1990, p. 141
  12. "Sake toasts tube tunnel". South China Morning Post. 27 March 1979. p. 1.
  13. Annual Report 1979. Hong Kong: Mass Transit Railway Corporation. 1980.
  14. "MTR Service Update". facebook.com/mtrupdate. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
  15. TVB News (15 July 2022). "回顧1980年過海地鐵首通車雅麗珊郡主開乘塔首班車經典直擊 - 新聞掏寶".
  16. "MTR passengers face Nathan Rd surcharge". South China Morning Post. 12 August 1993. Archived from the original on 28 September 2021. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
  17. "MTR to drop rush-hour surcharge". South China Morning Post. 8 April 1993. Archived from the original on 28 September 2021. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
  18. "Pressure on MTR to cut prices". South China Morning Post. 23 March 1993. Archived from the original on 28 September 2021. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
  19. "Hansard" (PDF). Legislative Council. 27 April 1988. Archived (PDF) from the original on 31 October 2019. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  20. Wah Kiu Yat Po (14 May 1991). "九巴新綫 波霸剪綵 繪上芳容 吸引乘客". Urban Council Public Libraries (in Cantonese). Archived from the original on 28 September 2021. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
  21. "MTR safety fears over KCR freeze". South China Morning Post. 18 February 1994. Archived from the original on 29 September 2021. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
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