Passengers check railway information in the Beijing West Railway station May 1st, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]
On May 1, at the start of the five-day Labor Day holiday, a large number of passengers crowded the waiting hall of Beijing West Railway Station after a technical snag triggered by strong winds led to a power outage that caused delays on the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed railway.
More than 30 high-speed trains including those from Beijing to Wuhan, Xi'an and Changsha were either delayed or canceled.
A day later, the railway authorities apologized to the passengers whose holiday plans were disrupted. Mei Ciqi, an associate professor of public management at Tsinghua University, blamed poor passenger-handling capability and lack of an emergency plan for the inconvenience faced by the passengers.