Citizens take off despite cool weather

THE sudden drop in temperature did little to dampen people’s enthusiasm to make the most of the three-day Qingming Festival holiday that ended on Saturday.

The city’s three major railway stations — Shanghai Railway Station, Shanghai South Railway Station and Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station — carried some 1.54 million passengers from the city.

Among them, 854,800 took the high speed trains from Hongqiao Railway Station alone, making for more than 55 percent of the total passenger flow.

About 77 percent of the passengers headed to the Yangtze River Delta region, prompting the authorities to announce 74 extra trains to Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces. Extra ticket windows and service desks were opened at the railway stations to aid the passengers.

The two airports handled about 900,000 passengers with people from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau flying in to mark the Qingming Festival.

Another 4.41 million people traveled by road, a 9 percent jump than last year. All the toll gates were free for the holiday period. Many people tried to leave the city early to avoid traffic but were still stuck even at 5am with long hours of waiting at the toll on Thursday.

Lei Jian, who was driving to Nantong in Jiangsu Province with family, said it took him more than an hour to get past the toll gate at G40 expressway around 6am.

“I thought I would avoid the crowd,” said Lei. “But I guess others were thinking just like me.”