When passing the intersection of Hanghai Road and Jingguang Road in Zhengzhou City again, Wang Fang could not help but look back at the southwest corner.

　　"There is my youth there. I have sold bus tickets there for nearly 10 years." Looking in the direction of Wang Fang's finger, it is a motor vehicle inspection station - just over half a year ago, its location was still open for 28 years. Zhengzhou Coach Terminal (hereinafter referred to as "Zhengzhou Coach Terminal").

　　Opened in December 1992, the Zhengzhou Passenger Transport Terminal, which is affiliated to Zhengzhou Transportation Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhengzhou Transportation Group"), was once one of the three largest bus passenger stations in Zhengzhou, sending passengers daily during peak periods. 20,000 passengers.

　　Wang Fang once thought that she would work at this station until retirement.

But now, she has witnessed with her own eyes that the passenger station was reluctantly shut down in October 2020, and was later transformed into a motor vehicle inspection station by Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group.

　　In fact, if you expand your attention to the whole country, the suspension and transformation of Zhengzhou Passenger Terminal is just a microcosm of the automobile passenger transportation industry, and the closing and suspension of passenger stations one after another has long been commonplace in the industry.

　　Seeing that the once-prosperous passenger station was now in a state of loss and closure, Wang Fang's eyes began to dim.

fall

　　Different from the sorrow of his colleague Wang Fang, what Si Yudong reveals more is the nostalgia and regret for the once brilliant Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group.

　　This "old passenger" who has worked in Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group for nearly 20 years, now serves as the head of the Party Committee Work Department of Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group.

　　"At peak times, our passenger shuttle bus goes west to Urumqi, south to Hainan, and north to Heilongjiang." Si Yudong said that the shuttle bus bound for Hainan had to cross the Qiongzhou Strait by ferry.

　　It was the golden age of passenger transport.

　　"In the past, in the golden age of road passenger transportation, it did some things that should have been done by railways and civil aviation. It seized this opportunity and rapidly developed thousands of kilometers of long-distance lines with high income." Zhang Tao, assistant general manager of Zhengzhou Jiaoyun, introduced.

　　Wang Fang still misses the hustle and bustle of the Spring Festival.

"Not only can't we buy tickets for trains, but even our buses have to book tickets in advance. In order to buy tickets, some passengers even asked someone to find me."

　　In the golden age of passenger transportation when the high-speed rail has not yet opened, the annual operating income of Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group has climbed from 730 million yuan when it was first established in 2003 to more than 1 billion yuan in 2008. 2 billion yuan.

　　At that time, including Zhengzhou Bus Terminal, Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group also owned more than 10 bus passenger stations, including Zhengzhou Long-distance Bus Central Station, South Bus Station, North Bus Station, and more than 2,200 passenger cars of Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group. It runs on more than 342 lines in 25 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country every day.

On the one hand, it transports more than 40 million passengers to all parts of the country every year; on the other hand, it also continuously promotes the revenue and profit of Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group.

　　Not only Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group, but also the national passenger transport industry are all triumphant.

　　Take the listed company Jiangxi Changyun (600561.SH) as an example. This backbone enterprise of passenger transport in Jiangxi Province, which has 7 passenger stations including Nanchang Long-distance Bus Station and Qingshan North Station, had an annual operating income of only 121 million yuan when it was listed in 2001. The annual net profit is 21.98 million yuan, but by 2014, the annual revenue has soared to 2.597 billion yuan, and the annual net profit has soared to 149 million yuan.

　　Like Jiangxi Changyun, Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group also planned to enter the capital market with great ambition.

In 2008, Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group signed contracts with three institutions including GF Securities, Beijing Boxing Investment Consulting Co., Ltd., and Reanda Certified Public Accountants, to promote the overall listing of the group, and to implement modern enterprise system training for middle and high-level personnel.

　　Looking back now, it may have been the best period of Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group. If it can be successfully listed at that time, it may enter a leap period.

But now, in the face of dwindling passenger traffic and declining revenue every year, going public has almost become a distant dream.

　　Take Zhengzhou Bus Terminal as an example. This station, which once sent 20,000 passengers a day during peak periods, had fallen to a minimum of 4,000 passengers a day when the service was suspended in October 2020.

During the Spring Festival travel period this year (February 10th to 15th), Zhengzhou's long-distance bus stations sent an average of 12,000 passengers a day, even less than one-tenth of the historical peak.

　　Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group, which once had an annual revenue of 2 billion yuan, has gradually declined to hundreds of millions of yuan in revenue, and it continues to decline at a double-digit rate every year.

And Jiangxi Changyun also began to decline after its revenue reached a peak of 2.8 billion yuan in 2017. By 2020, its annual revenue has dropped to 1.8 billion yuan, and its net profit for the year was 311 million yuan.

　　Data from the Statistical Bulletin on the Development of the Road and Waterway Transportation Industry released by the Ministry of Transport every year show that this decline is not a special case of a certain place or a certain company.

　　According to the data, in 2012, the total number of road passengers completed by commercial passenger vehicles in the country was as high as 35.570 billion, but by 2015, this figure had dropped significantly to 16.191 billion, and then it began to decline slowly at a rate of about 5% per year. , Among them, in 2016, the national commercial passenger car completed road passenger volume of 15.428 billion people, 14.548 billion people in 2017, 13.672 billion people in 2018, and 13.012 billion people in 2019.

Since 2020, due to the frequent intrusion of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the road passenger traffic has continued to decline. In 2020, the national commercial passenger vehicles have completed a total of 9.665 billion commercial passenger traffic, a decrease of 45.1% over the previous year.

　　Some passenger stations have also been closed for different reasons.

　　Since 2019, Guangzhou, one of the most economically developed cities in China, has successively closed Guangzhou North Railway Station, Yuexiu South Railway Station, Yongtai Bus Station, Huangpu Bus Terminal, Panyu Bus Terminal, and Guangzhou Automobile. Passenger Station, Panyu Shiqiao Bus Station and many other passenger stations.

A data from the Guangzhou Municipal Transportation Bureau shows that around 2011, the average daily passenger flow of Guangzhou's passenger stations was as high as 330,000. By 2021, this data has plummeted to 25,000, a drop of 90%.

　　In addition, Shenzhen, which is adjacent to Guangzhou, has successively closed several passenger stations such as Xincheng Bus Station, Fuyong Bus Station, Shajing Bus Station, and Dapeng Bus Station.

　　"Because of the impact and blow of high-speed rail, hitchhikers, industrial transfer and the new crown epidemic, the operating situation of Shajing Bus Station is not optimistic, the source of passengers and revenue have fallen sharply, and the station is in a state of serious losses. In order to reasonably stop losses, in August 2021, It will be closed from January 1." Shenzhen Shajing Bus Station said in a notice of closure.

extrusion

　　In the past January 2022, due to the sudden outbreak in Zhengzhou, Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group and its passenger stations and passenger shuttles were all suspended, and the company had almost no income for a whole month. "Including our chairman, we have thousands of people. employees, only 1,200 yuan is paid each month." Si Yudong said.

Even so, this is still a considerable expense for Zhengzhou Transportation Group, which is already on the verge of loss.

　　At first, many employees of Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group attributed the decline in revenue to the opening of the high-speed rail. "We have a popular saying that when a high-speed rail is opened, the entire (passenger) line will die." Si Yudong recalled that some colleagues at that time, Even to the point of "smell the color change of high-speed iron".

　　In fact, they are not the only ones who are frightened by the high-speed rail.

The Xiantao City Passenger Terminal in Hubei Province sent more than 3.3 million passengers in 2011, but in 2012, with the opening of the Hanyi Express Railway, the number of passengers from Xiantao to Wuhan fell by 95% overnight. By 2017, The station sends only 1.5 million passengers a year, with a loss of 1 million yuan.

　　The Huangzhou-Wuhan line, once known as the "golden route" for passenger transport, sent 6,800 passengers to Wuhan every day during peak hours. With the opening of the Wuhan-Huanggang Intercity Railway in 2014, the passenger flow of the line was reduced. dropped sharply to 800.

　　This "high-speed rail effect" is more obvious in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta where high-speed rail lines are dense.

　　Take the Shanghai-Nanjing Intercity High-speed Railway opened in 2010 as an example. Before the opening of the high-speed railway, the long-distance buses from Shanghai East Long-distance Station only stopped at three passenger stations in Nanjing. The inter-provincial highway passenger transport in Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Danyang, Nanjing and other cities has been affected.

"The annual decline is more than 10%, which can almost be said to be 'cliff-like'." A person in charge of a passenger station in Nanjing also sighed when talking about the industry's downturn.

　　Faced with the impact, the road passenger transport industry is not without its sober people.

In 2010, after the Zhengxi high-speed rail was opened to traffic, Si Yudong noticed in an industry magazine when he was looking up relevant data that some industry insiders began to propose that with the diversification of high-speed rail and other travel modes, with the development of informatization. Development, the decline of traditional passenger transport mode will be an irreversible inevitable trend.

　　"If we (the industry) were innovative in thinking at that time, changed our thinking early, and started the transformation, although it would be difficult to make breakthroughs in policy, as long as we push forward, there will be breakthroughs, and life may be better now." Si Yudong said.

However, the transformation has not yet been realized, and worse conditions will follow. Since 2020, the already declining passenger transportation industry has frequently been suspended due to the epidemic, and sometimes even stopped for several months, which can be described as worse.

　　Facing the steady decline of the main business of passenger transport, Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group had to plan for a transformation.

　　Initially, Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group regarded high-speed rail as its biggest "enemy", but after big data analysis, they found that although high-speed rail does have an impact on passenger transport, this impact is not only a substitution relationship, but a complementary relationship.

　　"The high-speed rail is fast, but it can't reach every township. The people it pulls have to rely on buses to pull them to the county and township in the end." Si Yudong said that it was this change in understanding that began to make them discover new Passenger Opportunities.

　　In February 2018, the first inter-provincial bus line in the country, namely the Zhengzhou-Jincheng line, was officially opened, with a one-way fare as low as 20 yuan, and only two months after the opening, the passenger flow between the two places was as high as 160,000.

Jincheng is located in the southern part of Shanxi Province, but it is closer to Zhengzhou in terms of distance. Compared with Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, Zhengzhou has denser high-speed rail lines, making it more convenient for Jincheng residents to travel.

　　Also aware of the complementary value of high-speed rail, aviation and passenger transport is Shanghai.

In 2019, when the passenger flow of the entire passenger transport industry was declining, the Pudong International Airport Long-distance Passenger Station found that its Spring Festival passenger flow increased by more than 10% year-on-year.

Subsequently, the station has successively opened round-trip routes to 17 cities in the Yangtze River Delta region, including Qidong, Nantong, Suzhou, Jiaxing, and Hangzhou.

　　In an interview with the media, a person in charge of the station said that although the high-speed rail is indeed fast, for passengers traveling to and from surrounding cities, it may be more direct and convenient to transfer at the passenger terminal.

"For example, if you also go to Suzhou, it takes about two hours by bus from here. If you go to the city and change to the high-speed rail, it may take more than an hour to get to the high-speed rail station, and it is inconvenient to carry large and small bags."

"Snatchers"

　　After clarifying its own positioning, Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group began to re-study "opponents" and innovate the method of "grabbing customers".

　　Zhang Tao said that at present, 400~1,000 kilometers is the main railway line, and more than 1,000 kilometers is the main site of civil aviation. High-speed rail does have some impact on passenger transportation. It will shrink the scope of road passenger transportation to within 400 kilometers, but high-speed rail is also the main road for road passenger transportation. Bring more short-distance radiation customers.

What really took away the most basic passenger flow of Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group were some "black cars", "wild cars" and "online car-hailing".

　　Si Yudong explained that the so-called "black cars" refer to vehicles that have no operating procedures but are operating illegally. Once these vehicles have a traffic accident, passengers will not only have no way to complain, but will also face difficulties in making claims; and "wild cars" are themselves Vehicles that have operational procedures but escaped from road safety supervision. According to regulations, these vehicles need to depart from the station. However, in order to avoid the management fee of the station, they ask for leave, repair vehicles, etc., or make regular customers wait outside the station. The end result of evading supervision is also the difficulty for passengers to claim compensation in the event of a traffic accident.

As for what they call "online car-hailing", it refers to some vehicles that have formal online taxi-hailing procedures but have been engaged in fixed-point and fixed-line passenger transportation in violation of regulations for a long time.

　　Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group's countermeasure is, on the one hand, to respond to the "door-to-door" ride demand of some customers, in addition to medium and large buses, launch commercial vehicles with only 9 seats, and rely on the online platform, Passengers implement "point-to-point" and "door-to-door" personal customized services, and thus extend travel scenarios such as campus through trains, intercity express lines, airport special lines, high-speed rail lines, and tourist lines.

Passengers can choose different customized passenger travel services in the mini program according to their travel needs.

　　On the other hand, it is "multiple sites in one stop".

Si Yudong said that this is a simple way of passenger station outside the station based on the passenger station. It has the basic functions of real-name ticket purchase and inspection, pick-up and drop-off, security inspection, consultation, epidemic prevention and control in traditional passenger stations, and does not require passengers. Spend a lot of time running around on the way to the bus station.

For example, Qilihe is one of the most concentrated areas of "black cars" in Zhengzhou. Next, Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group will set up a vehicle stop there, which can not only cover the range that cannot be radiated by traditional passenger stations, but also effectively solve the problems of passengers. The "last mile" travel problem forms a supplement to traditional passenger transport.

　　Regarding the transformation direction of the future automobile transportation station, Zhang Tao said that the next step is to focus on the main business, excavate and build related industries, and eventually gradually form a pattern in which the main business of passenger transportation is still the main business, and other industries are multi-industry.

On the basis of this idea, Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group has established five professional companies including Passenger Transport Corporation, Station Tourism Corporation, Logistics Corporation, Industrial Development Corporation, and Investment and Construction Corporation.

　　"Some of these sectors originally existed. This time, resource integration was carried out to allow professional people to do professional things and conduct professional operations. These layouts are not blindly diversified, but are made around the transportation industry chain." Zhang Tao explained.

　　These measures also affect Wang Fang, who has been diverted to other stations. Her income and her future are closely related to the transformation being promoted by Zhengzhou Jiaoyun Group.

　　From a national perspective, actively expanding the field of tourism and passenger transport is one of the new paths for the transformation and upgrading of the current automobile passenger transport industry.

For example, the Guangzhou East Railway Station Tourism Distribution Center and Xi’an Sanfuwan Tourist Distribution Center are all precedents for the local passenger station to promote tourism public services in the “passenger + tourism” model and realize the integrated development of travel agencies, scenic spots and automobile stations.

　　(Wang Fang is a pseudonym in the text)