1.1m people travel for holiday

An estimated 1.1 million people entered or exited Shanghai by road, rail, air and boat during the three-day May Day holiday that came to a close yesterday, a figure up roughly 7 percent from last year, local authorities said yesterday.

Local train stations took on most of the burden during the nationwide break, transporting an approximate 840,000 people, up 12.3 percent from the 736,400 passengers last year.

On Saturday alone, the first day of the holiday, the city's rail authorities moved a record 332,000 people, a 23 percent-jump from the highest daily volume of passengers handled during this year's Spring Festival travel rush.

The massive spike in travel was in large owed to a surge in the number of people traveling to nearby destinations in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, said Tao Liping, a press officer for Shanghai Railway Bureau.

"Due to favorable weather conditions, the May Day holiday is a particularly attractive time for local residents to explore places close to the city," he told the Global Times yesterday. "Train is a popular form of transport, given the price and convenience of our routes."

To cope with added demand yesterday, the last day of the break, when most people returned to the city before work resumed today, the city's rail authorities put an extra 38 trains into operation, roughly a third of which departed from Hangzhou, Ningbo and Nanjing.

On the roads, some 166,000 people chose to travel by long-distance buses, a figure that was slightly lower than last year's due to the increased number of people opting for the trains, local authorities said.

"While long-distance bus remains an affordable choice for many travelers, more people prefer to travel by train these days, especially since several high-speed rail routes cut down the travel times of long-distance bus routes," Zhang Yongbin, a press officer for the city's southern long-distance station, told the Global Times yesterday.

Another 71,800 people, meanwhile, departed from or arrived at the city via Hong-

qiao International Airport and Shanghai Pudong International Airport during the break. About 12,500 of them made regional trips, mostly to Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, a number that climbed about 8 percent from last year, said the city's border inspection station.

The local subway operator also took on its share of responsibility during the holiday, managing a rough 19.5 million people over the last three days. Those in town for the break set aside time to visit major attractions, with Shanghai World Financial Center's observatory seeing some 4,000 people daily, crowds that swelled by 50 percent from last year.

The iconic Oriental Pearl TV Tower, however, topped that with a total of 23,000 people over the holiday, the largest number of tourists seen at one spot in the city during the break; while Suzhou Creek's newly reopened inner-city boat tours were also busy, with roughly 90 percent of its some 1,000 holiday seats sold out for the past three days.

A small minority of local residents, roughly 330 of them, too, opted for outbound cruise ship travel for the holiday.