High technology brings conveniences to passengers in Guangzhou South Station

According to the China Railway Guangzhou Group, around 70 percent of passengers in southern China will be using high-speed trains to travel during the Spring Festival holiday.

Guangzhou South is one of the busiest train stations in China. During the Spring Festival holiday, countless passengers who moved to the Pearl River Delta for work head home for the holidays via the station.

China Railway Guangzhou Group has scheduled more high-speed trains to meet this year's rising public demand.

In addition to an increase in the number of trains, passengers will also notice other changes that have been made around Guangzhou South Station.

In an effort to make it easier for passengers to get to their destination, Artificial Intelligence technology has been incorporated into the station.

Chen Guisheng, a senior official with the China Railway Guangzhou Group, said, "Our station has a smart navigation system, which is very convenient. Guangzhou South Station covers 600,000 square meters, and this navigation system now covers the whole station, including the ground floor and underground floor. If you need to meet your friends in the station, you can use this system to guide you. You just need to send a location via WeChat to your friends."

Facial recognition technology has also been introduced to make travelling easier.

Liu Hui, a staff working at the Guangzhou South Station, introduced, "Now in high-speed railway stations, passengers must have their identity matched with the information on their tickets and ID cards. The machines we just saw allow passengers to enter the waiting room. But their tickets also need to be checked before they can get on the train, so we have the second generation of facial recognition machines that allow passengers to be checked-in to board the train. So the previous facial recognition has been further upgraded."

Popular mobile payment apps Alipay and WeChat Wallet offer greater convenience for passengers in a hurry that don't have cash with them.

A staff surnamed Li, who also works at Guangzhou South Station, said, "In the past it took about two minutes for each passenger to buy their ticket using cash. Since payment using Alipay and WeChat Wallet was introduced as a way to buy tickets, the time it takes to buy a ticket has fallen to less than 1 minute, 50% faster than before."

Guangzhou is expected to see more than 540 million passenger trips this year, accounting for about 14 percent of total rail transport in China.

Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chongqing, and Sichuan are among the top destinations.

During this year's Lunar New Year and Spring Festival travel rush, which lasts 40 days, Chinese people are predicted to make 2.98 billion trips, making the Festival the world's largest annual human migration.