Trains carry 6 mln people amid festival return rush

Nearly 6.66 million people traveled by train on Saturday as the week-long Spring Festival holiday ended, railway authorities said Sunday.

Saturday was the biggest day for China's public transportation since the start of the holiday, the Ministry of Railways (MOR) said on its website.

To cope with the post-holiday travel rush, railway authorities added 815 more trains to the country's railways. Railway traffic has generally been orderly, the ministry said.

The Spring Festival travel season will last from Jan. 8 to Feb. 16 this year, with hundreds of millions of people, mainly migrant workers and college students, traveling for the country's most important holiday.

Travelers are expected to make around 3.16 billion passenger trips this year, up 9.1 percent from a year earlier, of which 235 million trips will likely be made by train, up 6.1 percent year-on-year.