Railway stations in south China's Guangdong Province reported a peak passenger
flow of 490,000 travelers on Saturday as the week-long Spring Festival holiday came to the end.
Most of the passengers were people returning from home to work
after the week-long holiday and students back to college, according
to a railway station official.
The Guangzhou Railway Station alone, the largest in the
provincial capital, received more than 18,000 travelers on
Saturday.
"Our station received a train very three minutes today and we
had to open more passenger exits than usual to deal with the huge
passenger flow," said Zhang Xueke, head of the railway station.
"Another passenger flow peak will come around the Lantern
Festival on March 4, which eventually marks the end of the Spring
Festival," said Zhang.
The Ministry of Railways estimated that China's railways would
transport an unprecedented 156 million passengers during the 40-day
Spring Festival travel peak from Feb. 3 to March 14, up 4.3 percent
year-on-year.
The Guangdong Railway Group has planned to send 168 extra trains
to the provinces of Sichuan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui to take back
migrant workers who returned home for the Spring Festival.
(Xinhua News Agency February 25, 2007)