On April 22, the Guangzhou Statistics Bureau released the transportation industry data for the first quarter of 2024. In the first quarter, a series of holidays such as New Year's Day, the Spring Festival, and winter vacation boosted the passenger flow in the city, leading to a rapid growth. During this period, Guangzhou served a total of 80.8398 million passengers, which is an increase of 21.9 percent over the same period last year. In terms of travel, air, railway, and waterway passenger traffic all showed a rapid growth trend, with an increase of 37.1 percent, 25.1 percent, and 14.4 percent respectively.
(Photo: Zhong Zhihui)
Among them, the aviation industry performed particularly well, transporting more than eight million passengers per month and serving 26.219 million passengers in total, an increase of 12.1 percent over the same period in 2019. In the first quarter of 2024, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport handled 19.5991 million passenger throughput, an increase of 43.1 percent year-on-year.
In terms of railway passenger transportation, the passenger volume in the first quarter reached 35.2677 million, a year-on-year increase of 25.1 percent. Guangzhou gave full play to the advantages of the railway network, such as Guangzhou South Railway Station, Guangzhou Baiyun Railway Station, and Guangzhou East Railway Station, to strengthen the transportation organization during peak periods of passenger flow, such as the Spring Festival and New Year's Day, and continuously improve the passenger transport capacity.
In the first quarter, Guangzhou completed 209 million tons of freight, an increase of 2.6 percent, mainly by highway and waterway transportation. The growth rate of air cargo is the most impressive, with the completed cargo volume increasing by 32.4 percent year-on-year. Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport uses its more than 500,000 square meters of cargo station, over 60 cargo routes, as well as convenient gathering and distribution facilities to attract more than half of the province's air cargo mail sent from the airport. In the first quarter, the airport completed 556,600 tons of cargo throughput, an increase of 31.8 percent.
In addition, in the first quarter of 2024, the city also completed a total of 3.036 billion express businesses, an increase of 29.4 percent. Port foreign trade freight growth presents a good trend. The ports in the city completed 39.7682 million tons of foreign trade cargo throughput, an increase of 15.1 percent, and they also handled 6.0936 million TEU of containers, an increase of 7.4 percent, of which foreign trade container throughput increased by 17.4 percent.
Reporter | Nancy Ye
Editors | Steven, Monica, James
