Will you drive to sweep graves this Qingming? This Saturday marks the first tomb-sweeping peak day in the city before the Qingming Festival. With the first-ever free highway tolls during this year’s Qingming holiday, the number of people traveling by car to sweep graves is expected to surge significantly.
Yesterday, reporters learned from several cemeteries in Shanghai that many are urgently coordinating with surrounding resources to increase parking spaces. Some cemeteries will add more shuttle buses from rail transit stations, encouraging the public to take the train and then transfer to shuttles for grave visits.
GPS monitors cemetery conditions in real time
As the first tomb-sweeping peak day approaches, preparations at major cemeteries across Shanghai are in full swing. Yesterday, at Jiading Songhe Cemetery — the site with the highest tomb-sweeping traffic in the city — reporters saw that the fifth floor of the office building had been set up as the Jiading Qingming Command Center, where a GPS real-time monitoring system was being tested. Seven or eight screens displayed live updates on parking, grave visitation, and other conditions at several major cemeteries in Jiading. Outside the cemetery, several free shuttle buses were already running between Line 11’s Shanghai Circuit Station and the cemetery. Twenty thousand iron urns for burning paper had been prepared for public use.
“These past few days, over 10,000 people have visited Songhe Cemetery daily. We expect around 90,000 visitors this coming weekend, with over 10,000 vehicles. On Qingming Day itself, nearly 185,000 people are projected to come, with 18,000 vehicles,” said Lin Jianjun, an official at Songhe Cemetery. He noted that while the number of visitors has risen steadily over the years, and those taking the train and shuttle have increased significantly, private car usage hasn’t declined. Many large families come in multiple cars. Coupled with the first-ever free highway tolls during this year’s Qingming break, private car traffic is expected to rise sharply. To accommodate this, Songhe Cemetery has added 2,000 more parking spaces this year, and six borrowed parking lots from the F1 circuit, totaling 8,000 spaces, will also open this Saturday.
In addition, Songhe Cemetery has drawn up a “Qingming Rail Transit Shuttle Schedule,” with over 600 buses running throughout the peak period. On this Saturday — the first peak day — 80 shuttle buses will transport visitors between the cemetery and the rail station. At the height of the tomb-sweeping rush, 102 shuttle buses will be deployed and will leave as soon as they’re full.
Civil Affairs Bureau: Five-day tomb-sweeping peak
Similarly, Binhai Ancient Garden in Fengxian is another cemetery that sees heavy traffic. It is estimated that 83,000 visitors will come this Saturday, with numbers surging to 200,000 on April 4. Cemetery vehicle traffic is expected to hit 5,000 this Saturday, rising to 15,000 on Qingming Day.
Binhai Ancient Garden currently has only two parking lots with 1,500 spaces. The garden’s management said that in previous years, they rented about 500 temporary spaces nearby, directing visitors to them once the main lot filled. This year, they plan to secure 1,000 additional spaces. If demand still outstrips supply, vehicles may be directed to the parking lot of the adjacent Haiwan National Forest Park under police coordination.
The Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau revealed that from March 30 and 31, and April 4, 5, and 6 — a five-day period — an estimated 7.1 million visitors and 620,000 vehicles are expected at cemeteries. The peak “extreme value” may occur on Qingming Day, April 4, with up to 2.9 million visitors and 260,000 vehicles. Between 8:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. during these five days, major roads leading to cemeteries are likely to experience congestion. Tomb-sweeping activity will mainly concentrate along key roads and cemetery areas in Pudong New Area, Jiading, Qingpu, Fengxian, and Baoshan districts. Consequently, sections and intersections of highways such as S2 Hu-Lu Expressway, S4 Hu-Jin Expressway, G50 Hu-Yu Expressway, S5 Hu-Jia Expressway, and Tanglu Road on Huaxia East Road may see heavy traffic.