Ministry of Transport working to restore services around the country

China's transport authority has been making great efforts to maintain steady and smooth transportation as a growing number of people return to work and businesses resume operations amid the ongoing novel coronavirus outbreak.

Fan Zhenyu, deputy director of the Comprehensive Planning Department of the Ministry of Transport, said Tuesday that the ministry has carried out differentiated policies to restore road transport and public transport in different regions in line with their classifications of epidemic risk.

Between Feb 16 and Saturday, the country's highway network handled a total of 66.44 million freight trips, which saw a week-on-week increase of 95.4 percent, as well as 22.25 million passenger trips, up 136 percent compared with last week, he said at a news conference.

As of Monday, 27 provincial-level regions have resumed inter-provincial and inter-city bus services, he said, adding that among them, 26 regions have stepped up chartered buses to help some 477,000 migrant workers return to their workplaces after the Spring Festival.

Fan also noted that 115 prefecture-level cities, along with 158 county-level cities, resumed public transport service by Monday. Currently, a total of 505 cities, or more than 70 percent of all cities, have restored public transport, he added.