Hong Kong’s Transport Department (TD) issued a rare bilingual press release on 22 September urging residents and visitors to avoid peak-hour crossings during the Mainland’s Mid-Autumn Festival (25-27 September). With land-port traffic expected to soar, the TD has coordinated with rail, coach and shuttle-bus operators to inject significant additional capacity. On the rail side, the MTR East Rail Line will run extra trains to the Lo Wu and Lok Ma Chau checkpoints, while the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link will add long-haul sleeper services to Beijing and more short-haul trips to Futian and Shenzhenbei between 23 and 27 September. Bus operators will shorten headways on the HZMB “Gold Bus” to roughly one minute and on the Lok Ma Chau “Yellow Bus” to two minutes at peak. Cross-boundary coach quotas are being temporarily increased, and franchised “B-route” buses connecting urban areas to control points will operate above normal weekend frequencies. Motorists using private-car schemes are warned of probable lane closures at Lok Ma Chau and Shenzhen Bay. For corporates, the advisory means mobile staff should build in extra buffer time for Shenzhen or Guangzhou meetings scheduled around the holiday. Event organisers should stagger arrival and departure times for delegations to avoid the Sunday evening bottleneck. Logistics firms moving temperature-sensitive goods via the HZMB should factor in potential queueing even with the shuttle frequency boost. Travellers can monitor real-time lane status on the Security Bureau’s “Easy Boundary” platform and view live CCTV feeds via the HKeMobility app, both highlighted by TD in the notice.
