The number of passengers traveling for their holidays by road was heading for a record yesterday as the weather improved.
And the rail authority was urgently transporting supplies to the areas most affected by snow.
The Shanghai Urban Transport Management Bureau said yesterday it had upgraded its transport planning and long distance bus services for the next three days.
An extra 70 buses will be on call during this time to help move passengers to the more popular destinations.
The transport authority is expecting to gradually resume long distance trips to areas 800 kilometers or more from Shanghai.
About 150,000 travelers were expected to leave Shanghai by bus yesterday with an additional 1,500 temporary trips added to the schedules, officials said.
This would be the highest daily number of travelers ever for the period.
Because a large number of highways are still covered with ice and snow, provincial road links are not all working to full capacity.
More than 1,500 bus services were not operating up to midnight on Sunday, the authority said.
Officials also warned that a crackdown on unlicensed business during the New Year transport rush had so far netted 74 unlicensed vehicles.
The Shanghai Railway Administration said 142 trains, carrying power generators, winter clothes and food, had left for Hunan Province's Chenzhou and Jiangxi Province's Fuzhou from 10 railway stations in Shanghai and nearby provinces yesterday.
Chenzhou and Fuzhou were the most seriously affected areas in the snow and residents have suffered days of power blackouts and shortages of water.
The administration said it had opened railway green channels to ensure emergency supplies traveled as quickly as possible.
By 3pm yesterday, the number of suspended train services at Shanghai South Railway Station had been reduced to only six, the administration said.
All of the suspended services were on lines to the south and west part of the country.
Air traffic was back to normal at both airports yesterday.
(Shanghai Daily February 5, 2008)
