China's transport authorities will lay on an extra 112 train journeys between February 10 and February 17 to cope with the flood of passengers heading home for the Spring Festival, which falls on February 18.
Railway authorities had arranged an extra 636 train journeys each day, a record high, during the 40-day Spring Festival travel period, known in Chinese as Chunyun, from February 3 and March 14.
The number of extra journeys scheduled each day during the 40-day Chunyun period is up 17 on last year.
Almost all the country's trains have been put in use to cope with the rail passenger peak during the Spring Festival period, said a source with the Ministry of Railways.
The source estimated that an average of over 3.64 million passengers would be transported by train daily from February 10 to 17, up 50,000 people on last year. February 15 is expected to see a peak passenger flow of over 3.8 million, up 80,000.
Trains transported 254,000 passengers out of Beijing on Sunday, and 161,000 passengers left Shanghai, China's leading metropolis, by train on the same day.
Also on Sunday, trains transported 270,000 passengers out of Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province.
The Ministry of Railways estimates that China's railways will transport an unprecedented 156 million passengers during the 40-day Spring Festival travel peak from February 3 to March 14, up 4.3 percent year-on-year.
Passenger flows will be concentrated in Beijing and Guangzhou during the first 15 days and in Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanchang and Hefei during the remaining 25 days.
The peak is expected to come after the lunar New Year's Day, which falls on Feb. 18 this year, when college students begin to return to school and migrant workers return to the cities.
China's highways will transport 2 billion people during the Spring Festival period, up 5 percent from the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Communications.
China has 76,600 kilometers of railways in operation at the end of 2006. Last year, trains transported 1.25 billion passengers.
(Xinhua News Agency February 13, 2007)