SHENZHEN Bay Checkpoint Saturday opened the second floor of the traveler inspection building for the first time to cope with an outbound travel peak before the Spring Festival.

The checkpoint will open the second floor between Feb. 15 and 18 to alleviate pressure on border-crossing inspections.

The checkpoint's three-floor inspection building has only seen the first floor opened for inbound and outbound inspection, which has 42 inspection channels.

"I expected a long queue," said a traveler surnamed He, who was the first to use the outbound channel on the second floor.

A total of 19.54 million travelers have crossed the border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong through the checkpoint since it opened 32 months ago, checkpoint authorities said.

They estimated that between 25 and 26 million people would use Shenzhen Bay Checkpoint this year.

The peak hours at Luohu Checkpoint on Saturday morning saw 25,000 travelers.

Special channels were opened for tourist groups at Huanggang Checkpoint where 496 tourist groups had crossed by Saturday noon.

Because it was convenient to transfer to the Metro system, Futian Checkpoint had many foreigners pass through Saturday.

By Feb. 4, more than 50 million people had crossed through Futian Checkpoint.

A total of 330,000 travelers had crossed through city checkpoints by 3 p.m. Saturday, according to Shenzhen General Station of Exit-Entry Frontier Inspection.

The station expected a bigger number of cross-border travelers, either for shopping or returning home through Hong Kong in the run-up to the festival. Authorities have advised people to avoid peak hours between 9 a.m. and noon.

Futian and Wenjingdu, which have reported relatively light traffic, were recommended to avoid congestion at other checkpoints.

Source:Shenzhen Daily