Kowloon Tong Station was a part of the subway before the early system revision. With the commissioning of the revised early system Shek Kip Mei-Kwun Tong section, it was opened on June 1979 65438+ 10/day. At that time, the Kowloon-Canton Railway (British section) was not electrified, and the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, now the City University of Hong Kong, was not established. At the beginning of the opening of the subway, the passenger flow at the station was relatively deserted. At that time, the biggest tourists at the station were residents who traveled to and from Sha Tin and people who worked in Broadcast Road.

Electrification of Kowloon Railway

With the completion of the electrified railway of Kowloon-Canton Railway (British section), the former Kowloon Tong Station of Kowloon Railway was also opened on May 4th. 1982. Kowloon Tong Station was set up to connect the old subway system with the future development of new towns in Sha Tin, Tai Po and North District. Many people have moved into new towns one after another, and more and more people are using Kowloon Tong Station, which is beginning to be saturated. KCRC improved the station in 1995 and 2004 respectively.

Kowloon Tong Interchange Project

In view of the large passenger flow at Kowloon Tong Station, KCRC cooperated with MTR to build a new interchange on August 5438+0, 2006, which was officially opened on April 15, 2004 to coordinate with the improvement project of Kowloon Tong Station of the two railways respectively. The total length of the passage is 60 meters, and it takes about 90 seconds to walk from KCR platform to subway station, which is about half a minute faster than now. Passengers who take the Kowloon-Canton Railway and transfer to Kwun Tong Line can go directly to the lobby of Kwun Tong Line from the second berth of the Hung Hom-bound train via the new tunnel to relieve the congestion of the existing Peking University Hall. It is estimated that 30% transfer passengers will choose the new corridor, that is, 7000 passengers, which is enough to meet the demand in the future 15 years. There are also many shops in Xintong Road. In the expansion plan, in addition to changing to a new access road, a lobby with an area of about 1.800 square meters was added, and an exit was added at Dover Road. The whole project cost 280 million yuan. The MTR has spent more than 654.38 billion yuan to expand the lobby of Kowloon Tong Station and provide related new facilities, including installing 12 entrance and exit gates and 1 wide gates in the lobby near Exit D, and adding four shops at the interchange. In addition, a ground lift for passengers is added at the entrance and exit of Station E to prepare for connecting with the Education Department office building at the traffic interchange in the future.

At the same time, a giant mural named "8 by 8" has been installed in the new interchange, which is one of the projects of the subway station art architecture plan. This mural is composed of 12 glass enamel plates, which was designed by a famous local artist, Mr. Li Binggang, using computer graphics, and its creativity originated from China's classic book The Book of Changes.

Tsim Sha Tsui branch line

Since the Tsim Sha Tsui Branch Line of Kowloon-Canton Railway was opened to traffic on June 5438+10/October, 2004, the interchange flow at Kowloon Tong Station has been diverted to East Railway Tsim Sha Tsui East Station. It is because Tsim Sha Tsui East Railway Station can only facilitate passengers travelling to the south of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, but it cannot benefit passengers travelling between East and West Kowloon. Coupled with the short transfer time (5- 10 minutes' walk from Tsim Sha Tsui East Station to Tsuen Wan Line) and low fares, many passengers continue to use Kowloon Tong Station to transfer to east rail line.