A view of the Hong Kong West Kowloon Station on Sunday Photo: VCG

The Hong Kong section of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link marked its first year of operation on Monday with a decline in ridership in recent months, which experts said shows the line needs more time to attract regular passengers.

They also said the Hong Kong section has great potential to attract more passengers from the Chinese mainland amid the rise of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Continuous unrest in Hong Kong in recent months has affected the operation of its transportation section. As of June, average daily trips on that section exceeded 46,000 during weekdays and surpassed 64,000 during weekends, according to a statement sent to the Global Times by MTR Corp on Monday. MTR Corp is the operator of the Hong Kong section.

However, these figures fall short of the estimate of average daily trips of 80,100 given by Hong Kong's Transport and Housing Bureau in August 2018.

"Passenger volumes had been growing steadily as of June," read the statement. "But the figures in July and August have slumped." The MTR Corp did not provide detailed figures for the two months.

The passenger volume of the Hong Kong section of the high-speed rail hit a record low in August with daily trips of 37,623, down 36 percent from the peak, according to media reports.

During long holidays, many Hongkongers choose to take the line to the mainland to meet friends and relatives. Middle-distance trips - for example, those to Chaoshan in South China's Guangdong Province and Changsha, capital of Central China's Hunan Province - are quite popular, said the statement.

"The railway is really convenient. I can make a round trip between Shantou, Guangdong Province and Hong Kong in one day," Wendy, a Hong Kong resident whose husband has a factory in Shantou, told the Global Times on Monday.

"The biggest selling point of the Hong Kong section is that I could arrive downtown directly, but my friends and I have been canceling trips to Hong Kong due to the continuous unrest," a Shenzhen-based resident surnamed Ji told the Global Times.

The continuous riots in Hong Kong have been hindering travelers from all over the world. A Hong Kong tourism agency that offers cruises to enjoy fireworks shows scheduled on National Day had to cancel all reservations since the show was canceled due to concerns about safety, Tiffany Lee, an industry practitioner, told the Global Times.

Though recent passenger volume has decreased, MTR noted the overall service of the high-speed railway was smooth in its first year. The company decided to cooperate with tourism industries and roll out more preferential ticket policies to attract passengers.

"Improving operating efficiency and building up passenger volume need time," Zhao Jian, an expert on railway economics at the Beijing Jiaotong University, told the Global Times on Monday.

Given that the construction of the Greater Bay Area has been speeding up, it is reasonable for the Hong Kong section of the high-speed rail to achieve its goal in the future, Zhao noted.