More than 90 bus routes cross the fair zone, and 42 buses will run within 2.4 kilometers of the area. Six metro lines have stations in or near the Expo site. The newly opened Line 13 has three stations within the site, two on the Puxi side and one in Pudong. Lines 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 can carry 100,000 people per hour to nine stations near the Expo site at peak times.

It is suggested visitors, especially those from outside Shanghai, enter from the five entrances in Pudong rather than the three in Puxi, because about 75 percent of the ticket machines were on the Pudong side. Organizers will inform ticket holders which entrances have the shortest line-ups by sending text messages and displaying the information on large screens at the entrances to the site. Volunteers will also help to ease the visitor flow. All group tours will enter the site from Pudong.

For the convenience of the anticipated four million international visitors, Shanghai's traffic administration will, amid many other measures, offer free traffic guides and online and hotline services in foreign languages, install touch screen kiosks at local hotels, and dispatch volunteers competent in foreign languages.

Bedding Down in Shanghai

It is estimated that an average of 500,000 people per day will need accommodation in Shanghai during the Expo, but the beds available at local hotels are 50,000 to 10,000 short of this amount. So the organizer is looking to supplement them with private homestays and hotels in neighboring areas.

Shanghai Municipal Tourism Administration has trained local families to conduct homestays for international guests, which not only provides a convenience to tourists, but also exposes them more deeply to local culture. By providing frequent and convenient transportation, the tourism resources of other cities in the Yangtze River Delta region will be integrated to ease the bed shortage. Travel time from Shanghai to Wuxi, Suzhou, Nanjing, Ningbo or Hangzhou now is less than one hour, thanks to the Shanghai-Hangzhou high-speed railway and speed increases in the old railway lines between them. To bring the hotel resources in nearby cities into the hotel management strategy for the Shanghai Expo, will not only ease the pressure on Shanghai's hospitality sector but also bring more visitors to the region in the future. Those urban communities can provide an additional 390,000 hotel beds, and organizers will encourage hotels to rent their rooms as part of a package complete with Expo tickets and bus or train passes to the site.

Everlasting Expo

Expo Shanghai 2010 is the first in the Expo's 158-year history to be accompanied by an online exhibition. On the homepage of Expo Shanghai Online, one is already astonished by the beautiful 3D effects – ships sail on the Huangpu River, and Haibao, the Expo's mascot, introduces and interprets the landmarks. Computer programming allows for 360 degree turns. Clicking on a point of interest, you can change the viewing angle from straight-on to each side, as well as adopt a bird's-eye view.