Shanghai's railway stations to handle 837k passengers on final day of Spring Festival holiday

Shanghai's railway stations are set to handle a record number of passenger arrivals on Tuesday, the final day of the eight-day Spring Festival holiday, with an estimated 837,000 passengers.

The Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station is expected to handle the bulk of arrivals with 468,000 passengers, followed by Shanghai Railway Station with 220,000, Shanghai South Station with 94,000, and Shanghai Songjiang Station with 55,000 passengers, according to the Shanghai railway authorities.

A total of 1,047 trains are scheduled to arrive, with Hongqiao Station handling 543 arrivals. In addition, 120 extra train services have been added to cities like Xi'an of Shaanxi province and Zhengzhou of Henan province.

To accommodate the surge, the main waiting areas at Shanghai's four major stations will remain open 24 hours, with 60 night trains operating between midnight and 5 am on Wednesday.

To ensure smooth operations, extra staff will be stationed at key areas such as platforms and exits, and Hongqiao station has upgraded facilities and added new exit gates.

Furthermore, the railway administration has coordinated with local transit authorities to increase night buses, subways and airport line services to efficiently manage the influx of passengers.

The railway authorities have also coordinated with local transit services to increase night buses, subway, and airport line services to efficiently manage the influx of passengers.

In the broader Yangtze River Delta region, an additional 392 through-trains, 195 regional trains and 113 high-speed train sets are scheduled to be added to handle an estimated 2.88 million passengers on Tuesday.

Since the Spring Festival travel rush began on Jan 14, the Yangtze River Delta railway network has transported 53.23 million passengers as of Monday, a 6.5 percent increase from last year, with an average daily ridership of 2.53 million.

During this period, the network has broken its single-day passenger record three times, with the highest reaching 3.1 million passengers.