Trips decline significantly as Spring Festival travel rush ends

As the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush comes to an end on Monday, the transport regulator saw a significant decline in travel flow compared with last year and the year before.

Based on estimates, a total of 870 million passenger trips would have been made this year, a year-on-year decrease of 40.8 percent and a drop of 70.9 percent compared with 2019, according to the Ministry of Transport on Monday. 

The decline comes after effective and intensified prevention measures to curb the spread of the COVID-19 and government's call for people to cut unnecessary traveling.

The railway handled 220 million passenger trips, a decline of 46.5 percent compared with 2019 and an increase of 3.5 percent from last year. 

A total of 600 million passenger trips were made on roads, a drop of 75.5 percent than in 2019 and 50.2 percent compared with last year. 

Waterways transported 15.34 million passenger trips, a decrease of 69.8 percent than in 2019 and an increase of 24.5 percent from last year. 

Some 35.37 million passenger trips were handled by flights, a drop of 51.5 percent compared with 2019 and an 8.5 percent decline from last year. 

It is noted that 1.18 billion vehicle trips were made on freeways, a slight increase of 0.4 percent compared with 2019 and 77.6 percent more than last year. The number of passenger vehicles decreased but trucks increased significantly. 

Monday marks the last day of the Spring Festival travel rush, when 29.85 million passenger trips were expected to be made, 7.55 million by railway, 20.6 million by road, 420,000 by water and 1.28 by flights. 

Spring Festival, which fell on Feb 12 this year, is China's most important holiday for family reunion.

This year, to curb scattered COVID-19 cases, the government encouraged people to avoid travel and stay put to celebrate the holiday.