Travel surge continued to pick up in China on October 2 -- the second day of the ongoing eight-day National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday season, with nearly 290 million cross-region trips expected across the country, up 2.2 percent over the same day of last year.
The eight-day holiday season runs until October 8.
On the day, the national railway system handled an estimated 19.3 million passenger trips.
In southwest China's Yunnan, several additional cross-border tourist trains linking China with Laos and Vietnam have been put into service to deal with the surge in passengers. In northwest China's Xinjiang, major railway stations in Urumqi, Kashgar, and Hami are operating 24 hours a day to meet the surging travel demand. The Hohhot-Ejina route has been expanded from two pairs of train trips per week to daily services, while the newly opened Xiangyang-Jingmen high-speed railway in central China's Hubei has seen the time of travel between the two cities on it cut to just half an hour. Tourists can also enjoy ticket rate discounts at scenic spots along the line.
"It only takes 30 minutes to reach Xiangyang [from Jingmen]. I can have beef noodles in Xiangyang in the morning, tour the ancient city there during the day, and return to Jingmen in the evening, enabling me to have a round trip between the two places just on a same day," said a tourist named Li Wenrui.
Highway traffic has also climbed, with more than 260 million trips expected on the whole day, an anticipated year-on-year increase of 1.9 percent. Key urban clusters such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area in north China and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area city cluster in south China have all seen heavy flows on expressways and popular tourist routes. Newly opened expressways and upgraded rural roads have also seen a surge in regional travels.
On the day, the national air passenger transport system was projected to handle 2.45 million passenger trips nationwide, up 5.3 percent year on year, with 19,390 flights expected to be operated. Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu have ranked among the most popular destinations so far in the holiday season, with airlines adding flights and deploying wide-body aircraft to meet the growing travel demand.
Also on the day, the waterway passenger volume also rose, reaching an estimated 1.6 million passenger trips, a 14.8 percent increase over the same day of last year. Maritime authorities have worked to strengthen supervision over passenger vessels to ensure safe and smooth operations.
290 mln cross-region trips expected across China on 2nd day of 8-day holiday
