Rail traffic surges again as holiday winds down
Passengers wait to enter a platform at Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station.
Passengers board a train at Hefei South Railway Station.
Some 1.35 million train trips are expected to take place in the Yangtze River Delta region on Tuesday as Labor Day holiday wraps up, according to China Railway Shanghai Group.
The five-day holiday has seen an increase in rail passengers in the region compared with the travel rush following the recent Spring Festival, with a daily average of 1.32 million train trips recorded, the group said.
Between April 30 and May 4, travelers made 6.62 million train trips in the region, with May 1 witnessing a peak of 1.76 million trips, a record after the latest Spring Festival, the group said.
The region is densely populated and boasts a large number of tourist attractions, the group said.
Most train travelers flocked to cities along the Beijing-Shanghai, Shanghai-Nanjing, Shanghai-Hangzhou, Nanjing-Hangzhou, Ningbo-Taizhou-Wenzhou, Hangzhou-Huangshan, Hefei-Fuzhou and Nanjing-Anqing high-speed railways during the holiday, the group said.
Railway stations in Shanghai arranged 30 extra train services on Tuesday to cope with a return travel surge and most of the extra services cover Shanghai, Nanjing, Anhui Province and Guangdong Province.
A total of 310,000 arriving passengers are expected at railway stations in Shanghai, and the peak will be Tuesday afternoon and evening, the group said.
Amid the increase of tourist passengers, rail stations in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Xuzhou and Hefei have increased cleaning, disinfection and ventilation, and use infrared temperature screening machines to accelerate entry and exit, the group said.
Stations like Huangshan North and Nantong increased the number of staffers at security and ticket checkpoints to speed up passenger flows, the group said.
As the COVID-19 pandemic wanes in China, there has been a rise of passengers from the Yangtze River Delta region going to Beijing, and several train services have resumed since May 4, the group said.
These include trains from Shanghai, Huangshan, Hefei and Hangzhou to Beijing, the group said.
