Trams are the second least likely method of transportation in Hong Kong to be involved in an accident
Tram services in Happy Valley were suspended after a skip fell from a shopping mall and damaged part of an overhead wire of the tramway.
The Happy Valley Loop tram service stopped running at around 9am yesterday and one lane of Percival Street, next to the Lee Theatre in Causeway Bay, was closed to traffic.
A Transport Department spokeswoman said that while cases involving tram failure were usually resolved quickly, accidents that are caused by external factors may take longer to solve.
In an email to the press, Hong Kong Tramways said that “follow-up works (regarding the fallen object at Lee Theatre Plaza on Percival Street) have been completed. The Happy Valley Loop Tram service was resumed at 10:00pm.”
Thankfully, as our city boasts so many modes of public transport, the suspension did not seem to affect many.
"Sometimes I use the tram because it's cheap," Jude Benjamin Binder, 17, of Island School told Young Post over Facebook, "but the suspension from this incident had no significant effect on me."
Police received a report at around 1.45am on Tuesday that a skip measuring 2.4 metres by 1.7 metres had fallen from a height at the Lee Theatre Plaza, at the junction of Sharp Street East and Percival Street, in Causeway Bay. The skip damaged part of a canopy at the shopping mall as well as the overhead wire of the nearby tramway.
Local media reported that workers were trying to transfer the skip that was being used for maintenance work on the mall’s air-conditioning system. It was suspected the crane used to carry the skip could not bear the load. No one was injured in the accident.
According to statistics provided by a spokesman for the Transport Department, trams are the second least likely method of transportation in Hong Kong to be involved in an accident; there have only been 250 accidents in the past five years. In contrast, franchised buses have been involved in 11,511, and taxis in 21,790.