The number of passengers traveling for their holidays by road
was heading for a record yesterday as the weather improved.
And the rail authority was urgently transporting supplies to the
areas most affected by snow.
The Shanghai Urban Transport Management Bureau said yesterday it
had upgraded its transport planning and long distance bus services
for the next three days.
An extra 70 buses will be on call during this time to help move
passengers to the more popular destinations.
The transport authority is expecting to gradually resume long
distance trips to areas 800 kilometers or more from Shanghai.
About 150,000 travelers were expected to leave Shanghai by bus
yesterday with an additional 1,500 temporary trips added to the
schedules, officials said.
This would be the highest daily number of travelers ever for the
period.
Because a large number of highways are still covered with ice
and snow, provincial road links are not all working to full
capacity.
More than 1,500 bus services were not operating up to midnight
on Sunday, the authority said.
Officials also warned that a crackdown on unlicensed business
during the New Year transport rush had so far netted 74 unlicensed
vehicles.
The Shanghai Railway Administration said 142 trains, carrying
power generators, winter clothes and food, had left for Hunan
Province's Chenzhou and Jiangxi Province's Fuzhou from 10 railway
stations in Shanghai and nearby provinces yesterday.
Chenzhou and Fuzhou were the most seriously affected areas in
the snow and residents have suffered days of power blackouts and
shortages of water.
The administration said it had opened railway green channels to
ensure emergency supplies traveled as quickly as possible.
By 3pm yesterday, the number of suspended train services at
Shanghai South Railway Station had been reduced to only six, the
administration said.
All of the suspended services were on lines to the south and
west part of the country.
Air traffic was back to normal at both airports yesterday.
(Shanghai Daily February 5, 2008)