Hong Kong's Huanggang Port briefly seized up after midnight as Kai Tak concert and Lan Kwai Fong Halloween crowds funnelled into the sole 24-hour Shenzhen route

In the early hours of October 25, traffic towards the new Huanggang Port briefly seized up. After a concert at Kai Tak Sports Park and Halloween festivities in Central's Lan Kwai Fong ended on Saturday night, large crowds headed north to Shenzhen by road late into the night, and Huanggang Port, open since October 12, has become the default after-hours exit.

Around 1am: jammed approaches and boarding queues

A tip-off around 1am described the port approaches as overrun, with cross-boundary white-plate hire cars, taxis and other vehicles jammed together. Travellers wrote on social media that a three-kilometre crawl had taken an hour and moved only a few hundred metres, and that a coach boarded at midnight after the weekend entertainment still had not reached the gate.

The picture at boarding points was uneven: around 1am a reporter counted nearly 150 people waiting at the Mong Kok cross-boundary minibus stand, while the Tsim Sha Tsui cross-boundary bus stop held just over 20, with no long queue. By 2am the Hennessy Road stop in Wan Chai for coaches to Huanggang also showed only about 20 waiting. Staff there said passenger numbers had risen from 9pm, with departures roughly every 20 to 25 minutes, and that at the peak the queue had stretched back to Wan Chai MTR station.

Easing by about 2am, but allow extra time

A driver put the Wan Chai-to-Huanggang run at about an hour, plus another half-hour waiting to enter the checkpoint. By about 2am the queues had begun to clear, but the short, sharp jam showed how the diversion capacity of a single 24-hour corridor is tested when concert and festival crowds and late-night northbound demand collide on the same night.

Another local outlet reported the same night: after the concert and Halloween events, late-night bus passengers in Mong Kok waited about an hour, with roads crowded with taxis, minibuses and cross-border vehicles. Travellers heading north late on big-event nights should allow considerably more time.