As the five-day Easter and Ching Ming holidays wrap up, traveling residents began returning to the city on Tuesday through various boundary control points, with Hong Kong West Kowloon Station seeing homecoming crowds arrive in the morning.
The Immigration Department recorded around 176,000 passenger trips through various checkpoints as of 10am, including 89,000 arrivals. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge was the busiest with over 20,000 passenger trips, followed by the airport and Lok Ma Chau control point.
A family of four, who had spent five days in Shanwei, said they chose to travel to the mainland by high-speed rail due to its convenience. They had postponed their return to Hong Kong until the final holiday day as they could not secure tickets for the previous day, and only the earliest and latest train services were still available.
Another family of four traveled to Guangzhou to visit relatives and sight-see. They decided to bring their children to the mainland during Easter to learn more about Chinese culture. They noted that mainland crowds were generally manageable during the holiday, though traffic was quite chaotic on the first day.
Having missed their scheduled return train yesterday and being unable to book another ticket for the same day, they took an early morning train back to Hong Kong today to prepare their return to work.
A resident, who visited Shanwei for three days to return to her hometown with family, only managed to get one ticket back to Hong Kong on the final day. She noted that tickets sold out within seconds. Her family members, who failed to secure tickets, had to return via Shenzhen North Station. She said she would avoid traveling during long holidays to stay away from crowds.
Inside the station, announcements were made regularly to remind passengers that the taxi stand was heavily congested and to advise them to use alternative modes of transport.
