Shanghai will face a flood of migrant workers flocking back to
the city to find work, mainly from Anhui, Sichuan and Hubei
Provinces, railway operators said yesterday.
Shanghai Railway Administration officials said 61,000 passengers
boarded trains on Tuesday to leave from Fuyang Railway Station,
about 50,000 people more than its regular daily turnover.
Fuyang is a crucial railway center in Anhui and one of the
country's biggest sources of urban farmer workers who would be
seeking jobs in such big cities as Shanghai and Beijing.
Extra train services had been launched for trips from Fuyang,
Hefei and Bengbu stations, all in Anhui.
Returning migrant workers mainly from Anhui, Sichuan and Hubei
Provinces would start to flock to Shanghai by trains and long-haul
buses no later than tomorrow, according to the transport
authority.
Advanced booking for railway tickets was re-extended to 11 days
from yesterday, after weeks-long changes to relieve the hordes
during the Spring Festival.
On the first two days of this week, a total of 1.47 million
people traveled by rail in the Yangtze Delta Region and part of
Anhui, an increase of 10.5 percent from the previous year.
Nearly 150,000 people would have left by two local railway
stations by the end of yesterday, according to the local railway
operators.
The passenger turnover by air had so far totaled to nearly 2.8
million since the Spring Festival transport peak started on January
23, increasing by 4.8 percent from a year earlier, Shanghai Airport
Authority said yesterday.
The Pudong International Airport handled 1.62 million of these
passengers.
At least 74 million people traveled by urban public transport
means during the weeklong holiday, the urban transport authority
said.
The taxi booking hotlines were kept all busy in the holiday
while the number of bus riders slightly reduced from a year
earlier.
More than 21 million people took taxies by phone-booking during
the week while buses across town handled a turnover of over 38
million at the same time, authority said.
The city's newly-expanded Metro network catered to about 1.9
million riders on average every day during the holiday week, which
is 34 percent higher than the same period last year.
(Shanghai Daily February 14, 2008)