Railways brace for post-festival travel peak_English

BEIJING, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- China's railways will see the first post-Spring Festival travel peak on Saturday, as millions ride back to work or study after days of family reunions or sightseeing, said the Ministry of Railways (MOR) on Friday.

Railways carried 4.24 million passengers on Thursday, 11.2 percent more than Wednesday, with mid- and long-distance trips rising 23 percent, said the MOR office in charge of Spring Festival transport.

Migrant workers walk out of Hangzhou Railway Station in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, Jan. 30, 2009. As the Spring Festival holiday is about to finish, passenger transportation of the Spring Festival started to reach the peak of return passengers.

Migrant workers walk out of Hangzhou Railway Station in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, Jan. 30, 2009. (Xinhua/Hu Guanhua)
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To meet the growing travel demand, the MOR would arrange more trains for busy hubs in such provinces as Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi, said the office.

Altogether 562 temporary trains were put to use on Thursday, 190 more than the previous day.

The MOR also urged railway officials to better organize transport and ticket selling in order not to get passengers stranded.

In the first 19 days of the 40-day festival rush period starting from Jan. 11, 83.1 million trips were made on the country's railways, said the office.

That was 4.37 million on average every day, or 16 percent more than the same period of last year.

Meanwhile, road travelers on Friday surged 60.4 percent from Thursday, said the Ministry of Transport (MOT) on Friday.

More than 720,000 mid- and large-sized buses carried 47.6 million people on Friday, said the MOT. The passenger flow was up 6.6 percent from the same period last year.

Local bus companies have added capacity to routes destined for the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian, where millions of migrant rural workers were employed, according to the MOT.

The MOT estimated 1.23 million traveled by water on Friday, 3 percent more than a year earlier.

The Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year, is the most important traditional festival in China. It falls on Jan. 26 this year.