Shenzhen’s main high-speed rail hub has set a new travel record, with official data showing Shenzhen North Railway Station handled more than 116 million passenger trips in the first 11 months of the year, the South China Morning Post reports.
High domestic demand for train travel and a boom in journeys to and from Hong Kong – facilitated by a relaxation in travel policies – are behind the 8.8 percent year-on-year increase. The station is one of Guangdong’s largest transport centres and a key mainland connection point for Hong Kong’s West Kowloon terminus.
The station’s passenger volumes between January and November were six times the city’s registered population.
Shenzhen North recorded its busiest-ever departure day (almost 400,000 passengers) on 1 October, the start of the National Day holiday, while its highest single-day arrival volume (343,000) came in early February, following the Lunar New Year break.
[See more: The Guangzhou-Zhanjiang high-speed railway is undergoing final trials]
Popular destinations from Shenzhen North include mainland cities like Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, Chengdu, Chongqing and Shanghai.
The 11-platform station was not built for such massive passenger flows and Hong Kong residents spoken to by the Post, who regularly pass through Shenzhen North to visit Shenzhen and other mainland cities, complained it was seriously overcrowded.
Chen Zixin, a postgraduate student at the University of Hong Kong, said transiting there could be exhausting. “Infrastructure planning and construction are falling behind demand … and it’s causing a headache for both locals and those from Hong Kong,” he noted.
While a new 13-platform station dubbed Shenzhen Xili, even closer to the Hong Kong border, is already under construction, the 37.1 billion yuan (US$5.26 billion) facility isn’t scheduled to start opening until 2028.
