Number of passenger trips during holiday rush expected to double

Nearly double the number of passenger trips are expected to be made during this year's Spring Festival travel rush compared with last year, a transportation official said.

About 2 billion passenger trips are expected to be made during the upcoming holiday rush, Vice-Minister of Transport Xu Chengguang said at a news conference on Friday.

The volume of passenger trips will see a year-on-year increase of 99.5 percent, roughly 70.3 percent of the volume in 2019.

Prior to the COVID-19 epidemic in 2019, 2.98 billion passenger trips were made during the travel rush.

This year's 40-day travel rush will start on Jan 7 and end on Feb 15.