Hong Kong ramps up rail, bus and bridge services and opens 24-hour command centre for Labour Day Golden Week

With just three days to go before the Mainland’s five-day Labour Day Golden Week begins on 1 May, Hong Kong has switched to what officials call “full peak-flow mode”. An inter-departmental working group chaired by the Chief Secretary today (28 April) unveiled a comprehensive transport playbook designed to keep the city’s nine land boundary control points moving. The group has ordered the MTR Corporation to add 26 extra trains per day on the East Rail Line between Admiralty and Lo Wu / Lok Ma Chau from 30 April to 5 May, while the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link will operate 13 additional pairs of high-speed services daily during the first four days of the holiday and a lighter supplement thereafter. Road links are being turbo-charged as well. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB) “Gold Bus” shuttle will run as frequently as once per minute during peak hours, and the Lok Ma Chau-Huanggang “Yellow Bus” will step up to two-minute headways if queues build. Franchised bus operators have been told to keep large reserves of drivers and vehicles on standby so that feeder routes labelled “B” can be boosted in real time. To coordinate the moving pieces, a 24-hour Joint Command Centre combining the Immigration Department, Police, Customs & Excise and the MTR will go live inside the Lo Wu control-point complex at midnight on 30 April. Live CCTV feeds, AI-driven crowd analytics and dashboard data from the “Easy Boundary” platform will allow officers to predict congestion up to 20 minutes ahead and redeploy counters or redirect passengers before bottlenecks form. The working group says the goal is to keep average waiting times below 30 minutes even at the busiest checkpoints.



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Travellers are being urged to travel outside peak hours, pre-buy shuttle-bus tickets and consult the Easy Boundary website, the HKeMobility app and the TD’s CCTV snapshots for up-to-the-minute conditions. Motorists heading to Zhuhai should note that the temporary link bridge at HZMB Zhuhai Port is closed, while private cars may face special traffic controls at Lok Ma Chau and Shenzhen Bay ports to prioritise public transport. For corporate mobility managers, the message is clear: expect very heavy demand on cross-boundary services between 30 April and 5 May, build extra travel time into itineraries, and brief travelling staff on alternative routes such as the airport ferry to Shekou or the newly-enhanced sleeper train to Beijing. The government also reminds business visitors that they must carry both their travel document and Hong Kong smart ID card (if non-permanent residents) to speed up e-Channel clearance.