The passenger transport of the city is predicted to overload for the next year's Spring Festival peak travel period from January 17 to February 25, the Shanghai Morning Post reported today.
The city's more than ten universities will have winter holiday since January 17-20, so the non-local university students are very likely to crowd with the rural workers and also family-visitors on rail transport.
The city has some 130,000 non-local university students and approximately 100,000 of them will go home by train.
Local universities should set the date of the winter holidays three or five days ahead of the Spring Festival peak travel period as only the student flow can be managed by certain departments, according to the railway department.
The Fudan University is considering cutting their semester from 20 weeks to 18 weeks so that non-local students can go home early than normal, according to the Fudan University.
It is hard to break the long-standing educational system and the 20-week educational plan is decided beforehand, said the spokesman with another local university. The railway department should do some surveys on the number of non-local universities and their schedules to return home to make early preparations, the spokesman said.
(eastday.com December 10, 2002)
