Kowloon–Canton Railway Corporation

Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation

The way ahead
Type	Statutory body
Industry	Public transportation
Founded	Hong Kong, December 1982
Headquarters	Fo Tan, Hong Kong
Number of locations	Hong Kong
Area served	Hong Kong
Website	www.kcrc.com

The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation (KCRC; Chinese: 九廣鐵路公司) was established in 1982 under the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation Ordinance for the purposes of operating the Kowloon-Canton Railway (KCR), and to construct and operate other new railways. On 2 December 2007, the MTR Corporation Limited, another railway operator in Hong Kong, took over the operation of the KCR network under a 50-year service concession agreement, which can be extended. Under the service concession, KCRC retains ownership of the KCR network with the MTR Corporation Limited making annual payments to KCRC for the right to operate the network. The KCRC is wholly owned by the Hong Kong Government and its activities are governed by the KCRC Ordinance as amended in 2007 by the Rail Merger Ordinance to enable the service concession agreement to be entered into with the MTR Corporation Limited.

From 1910 to 1982, the KCR network was operated as a department of the Hong Kong Government. The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation was created in December 1982 after the government decided to corporatise its railway department. Until 2007, the KCR owned and operated a network of heavy rail, light rail and feeder bus routes within Kowloon and the New Territories. It was also a land developer by utilising its property development rights atop and around railway stations and depots. In December 2007, it ceased railway operations, with its business becoming primarily that of earning revenue from being the holder of railway assets. While it continues to own the rail network, the network is operated by the MTR Corporation under a 50-year service concession, for which the MTR Corporation Limited makes annual payments to KCR.

The events leading to the present day KCR go back over one hundred years. During the 19th century, the western colonial powers competed with each other to establish and maintain commercial and political spheres of influence in China. Hong Kong held a vital position in protecting British trading interests in South China.

The idea of connecting Hong Kong and China with a railway was first proposed to prominent Hong Kong businessmen in March 1864 by a British railway engineer, Sir Rowland MacDonald Stephenson, who had considerable experience of developing railways in India. The minutes of the committee of the Chamber of Commerce meeting in Hong Kong, where a letter setting out his ideas was considered on 7 March 1864, state that "the opinions of the Chamber in respect to his suggestions should be recorded in the form of a letter, to the effect that the Committee deem it essential for the advancement of the project that short lines of railway should at first only be tried, and that it is not advisable at present to interfere with any water communications which are already established and can generally be worked more cheaply than railway traffic."