Passengers made more than 30 million trips using Hong Kong’s cross-border high-speed rail link last year, with the figure representing a 17 per cent increase from 2024 and setting a record.

The MTR Corporation also revealed on Sunday that the West Kowloon rail terminus set a new single-day ridership record on December 27, when the number of passenger trips reached about 140,000.

The company also described last year’s usage figure as a “record high”, while noting that cumulative patronage since the service launched in September 2018 had recently surpassed 100 million passenger journeys.

“Currently, the majority of [high-speed rail] passengers are short-haul travellers, accounting for approximately 80 per cent of the total,” the company said.

“The proportion of Hong Kong residents [using the service] has steadily increased from about 30 per cent initially to approximately 45 per cent.”

It added that mainland Chinese and overseas travellers accounted for the rest of the figure.