As the National Day holiday drew to a close, data released on October 8 by the Huaihua Municipal Bureau of Transport showed that during this year’s National Day holiday from October 1 to 7, the city’s transport system handled a total of 666,900 passenger trips, averaging 95,300 passenger trips per day.
Conventional trains carried 87,100 passenger trips, up 14.36% year on year; high-speed trains carried 225,700 passenger trips, up 5.90%; civil aviation handled 4,600 passenger trips; road passenger transport handled 289,000 passenger trips; and waterway passenger transport handled 60,500 passenger trips. The total flow at expressway entry and exit points reached 2.0079 million vehicles.
The overall number of passenger trips during this year’s holiday declined, mainly because the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays coincided in 2025 to form an eight-day break. Passenger flow during this year’s National Day holiday featured three distinctive characteristics. First, railway became the absolute mainstay, with an evident trend toward high-speed rail. Railways accounted for 46.9% of the comprehensive passenger volume, with conventional trains posting year-on-year growth of 22.0%, 54.7% and 47.2% respectively over the last three days, reflecting the enhanced role of Huaihua as a national comprehensive transport hub in passenger collection and distribution. Second, passenger flow showed a tidal pattern of “high at both ends and low in the middle,” with the return-travel peak notably shifting later. On October 1, a total of 116,700 passenger trips were handled, the single-day peak (accounting for 17.5% of the seven-day total), while expressway traffic also peaked at 328,200 vehicles the same day; the figure declined on October 3 and rose 4.2% and 8.4% on October 6 and 7 respectively. Third, there was structural differentiation in travel modes, with passengers shifting from road and waterway transport to rail, and a clearer division of labor emerging between short- and medium-distance self-driving trips and medium- and long-distance rail travel.
To fully safeguard travel safety during the holiday, the Huaihua Municipal Bureau of Transport insisted on early planning and early arrangement, made preparations in advance and shouldered all responsibilities earnestly, and adopted multiple measures to firmly implement tasks related to work safety.
Before the holiday, the bureau organized 296 people from the city’s transport system, including business departments, industry regulatory departments and enterprises with major hazard sources, to participate in the ministerial and provincial special trainings on elevated control of major hazard sources during the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday.
The city’s transport industry held a video work conference to coordinate the investigation and rectification of hidden dangers, strictly implement the responsibility system for bureau leaders covering designated areas, and push supervisory forces down to the front line. Five comprehensive inspection teams were formed to carry out all-industry comprehensive work safety inspections across 13 counties, county-level cities and districts, identifying and handing over four major hidden dangers, one prominent risk and 116 general hidden dangers.
Meanwhile, the bureau strictly implemented the requirements for elevated control, with enterprises carrying out daily self-inspections and daily reporting, and regulatory departments conducting daily scheduling, verification and daily reporting. As of October 3, the whole system had verified 390 vehicles under control for inter-provincial and inter-city chartered bus services, 312 vehicles under control for transporting dangerous goods, 253 passenger vessels under control, 40 road sections and bridges and tunnels vulnerable to extreme weather and natural disasters, 12 vessel lockage operations, seven construction projects involving major hazardous works, and 23 road-related construction projects, effectively ensuring the safety of transport.
(Translated by Yang Hong)