Lawmakers who hopped aboard the first high-speed rail service to Guangzhou East on Sunday expressed hope that the MTR Corporation could run more frequent trains to meet passenger demand, with one calling for non-stop services to make journeys faster.

Trains on the Express Rail Link began operating for the first time in three years with 5,000 tickets per day offered from West Kowloon to Guangzhou and Shenzhen North. The same number of tickets are are avaiable for journeys in the opposite direction.

Lawmaker Andrew Lam described his journey to Guangzhou as smooth and convenient. He said he hoped more travellers would snap up tickets, especially ahead of and during the upcoming Lunar New Year holidays. 

But Roundtable lawmaker and former KCR chairman Michael Tien said “express trains” should be arranged to take passengers from Hong Kong to Guangzhou without any stops inbetween. 

“What I’m not happy about is that this high-speed rail is not so high speed because it takes one and a half hours. The problem is there are too many stops and it has to slow down and accelerate,” he said, pointing out that people could make it to Guangzhou on the traditional through train in two hours.

Another way to make the express rail even more convenient, Tien said, would be to allow people to stand on the trains. 

“It will become just like the MTR. You walk into the station any time on any day… except that you’re not guaranteed a seat but you can stand. Pre-booking should continue but a last-minute walk-in should also be allowed,” he said