SHENZHEN has been experiencing an annual traffic rush after the Spring Festival holiday since Friday with millions of residents returning to the city.

    Service hours of public buses bound for city centers from five train stations will be extended from Friday to March 3 for residents who arrive in the city late at night. Metro service hours will remain the same, according to the city’s transportation department.

    Four bus routes that depart from the Shenzhen Train Station in Luohu District will run until 4 a.m. and five other bus routes (302, 352, 337, 309, and 387) will provide 24-hour service.

    The bus routes at Shenzhen East Station in Buji in Longgang District will operate until 1:30 a.m.

    Bus routes connecting Shenzhen North Station in Longhua New Area are also operating on a 24-hour schedule. The service hour for two bus routes departing from Pingshan Station in east Shenzhen is extended to 11 p.m.

    According to the city’s special office for the traffic rush during the Spring Festival, 9.02 million people used public transportation to leave the city during the holiday. Shenzhen airport witnessed more than 600,000 people returning to the city by air on Saturday.

    The number of travelers entering and exiting Shenzhen through checkpoints during the 7-day national holiday was 3.33 million, with a daily average of 555,200. According to the frontier inspection stations, most of the travelers from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan entered into the Chinese Mainland to visit friends and family, while most mainland visitors exited through checkpoints to travel overseas.

    Statistics show that over 772,700 vehicles entered Shenzhen during the holidays, while more than 742,100 vehicles left the city. The city’s traffic police handled 3,878 traffic cases during Chinese New Year and seven people were killed in accidents.

    (Zhang Qian)