Holiday train travelers set new record

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SHENZHEN North Railway Station and stations under its administration in the city handled a total of 3.07 million travelers during the National Day holiday period, an increase of 29 percent over the same period last year, the railway operator said yesterday.

The North Railway Station itself handled about 150,000 travelers a day, 22,000 more than the number of daily passengers during this year’s Spring Festival period. On Oct. 1, the station saw 185,000 travelers, a new record. The station operated 241 pairs of high-speed trains a day during the National Day holiday.

Shenzhen airport also saw a peak of travelers over the weekend with a total of 1.05 million passengers, an increase of 11 percent, using air service during the holiday.

Shenzhen checkpoints saw the peak of returning travelers start Saturday as the National Day holiday was coming to an end. Huanggang Checkpoint and Futian Checkpoint saw many groups of travelers returning from Southeast Asian countries, South Korea and Australia.

The surge of returning passengers started at 3 a.m. Saturday at Huanggang Checkpoint, which is open 24 hours a day. On Saturday, a total of 280,000 travelers went through the two checkpoints, and more than half were inbound travelers.

Nationwide, the country saw a significant increase in train travel yesterday as millions of Chinese people traveled back from their vacation destinations on the final day of the National Day holiday to return to work and school.

An estimated 14 million passengers were expected to make train journeys yesterday, Xinhua News Agency said, citing China Railway Corp. (CRC).

People in China had made about 105 million trips by railway since the holiday travel rush started Sept. 28, the CRC said Saturday.

Chinese railways set a new record for daily passenger traffic as more than 15 million trips were made Oct. 1, the first day of the eight-day holiday.

Railways nationwide will serve around 130 million passengers in the 11 days following Sept. 28, according to an early forecast by the CRC.

The National Day holiday was extended to eight days this year to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, which fell on Oct. 4.

The surge in passenger flows during the holiday shows leisure travel has become a major holiday entertainment, boosted by improving living standards.

Some popular tourist sites including the Forbidden City, Huangshan Mountain and Baiyangdian Lake had to impose visit ceilings. Visits to distinctive resort towns, rural attractions and revolutionary heritage sites proved popular during the holiday.