China greeted a travel peak for returning to workplace on Thursday, the 7th day of the Chinese New Year, as millions of passengers were flooding railways, highways, and airports. The Traffic Management Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security forecast that the peak flow of passengers will last until February 24, the 9th day of the Chinese New Year while college students will make return trips for the beginning of the new semester around February 25.
The railway sent off 11.8 million passengers on Wednesday with the addition of 1091 trains.
In Sichuan, Chongqing and Guizhou, tickets for trains heading for Beijing and the cities in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta fell short of supply.
Night trains will be added for rides between Nanchang, Pingxiang, Shangrao and Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Huangzhou and Fuzhou in the coming days.
A new peak of passenger flow is expected to test the transportation network around the Lantern Festival, which falls on the 15th day of the first lunar month.
Railway trips in China hit a record high at the end of Spring Festival holiday as travelers returned to work, the national railway operator said Thursday.
On Wednesday, 12.1 million passenger trips were made by rail, up 10.5 percent from the last day of the 2017 holiday and a daily record, according to the China Railway Corporation or CRC.
On Thursday, 11.8 million railway trips were made, with an additional 1,207 trains scheduled, the CRC said.
Traffic gridlocks were reported on highways across the country on Wednesday, the last day of the spring festival holiday as passenger cars with seven seats or less and motorcycles are granted the privilege to get a free pass through toll roads, bridges and tunnels during the Spring Festival holiday.
As the weeklong Chinese New Year holiday comes to an end, a halt of ferry services across the Qiongzhou Strait due to heavy fog created lengthy traffic jams, obstructing more than 10,000 cars that were leaving the southern China region.
Ferry services were stopped on Monday due to bad weather and resumed Tuesday, but it still obstructed more than 10,000 cars that were leaving as of Wednesday afternoon. The ferry service is the only way to drive to and from the island.
To alleviate traffic jams, the municipal government of Haikou issued an urgent notice, asking for all public departments except emergency and basic service departments to take a day off Feb 22.
(Source:Jiangsu International Channel)
