The city will face increased pressure on its transport system during the Chinese New Year holiday with an estimated 26 million people travelling in and out of town, affected by the new policy that cancels the Labor Day weeklong holiday in May from this year.

After national authorities announced they were to end the Golden Week holiday, transport authorities believed many more non-local students and migrant workers in Shanghai would be planning to make use of the long holiday to head home for family reunions.

The 40-day Spring Festival transport peak kicks off on January 23.

The local Spring Festival Transport Administrative Office said yesterday that an estimated 26 million people would travel in and out of town during the period, up about seven percent from a year earlier. Locally, 12.96 million people would travel cross town by Metro, bus or taxi, about eight percent higher than the same period last year.

Nationwide, 2.37 billion people would travel in China during the 40-day transport peak including 16.8 billion by trains.

The city's average temperature during the transport peak period would be around six degrees Celsius but the lowest could be down to between four and two degrees below zero, the office said yesterday.

The city's coach service will have 3,240 extra coach shuttles during the transport peak. The extra shuttles would handle passengers heading for neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. It would be good news to passengers leaving for some northern localities in Jiangsu Province where trains leaving from Shanghai did not stop.

The Long-Distance Bus General Station is to sell return tickets between Shanghai and Nantong and Suzhou cities in Jiangsu. Previously travelers could only buy one-way tickets.

Shanghai Port International Cruise Terminal will handle more than 12,000 Chinese and overseas passengers by passenger liners in the peak period, more than double the turnover in the same period last year.