China sees record nine billion trips over this Lunar New Year
CHINA is gearing up for a record number of trips during Lunar New Year and has vowed efforts to ensure safety as hundreds of millions of people take to the skies, roads and rails.
“According to our estimation, a record high 9 billion trips will likely be made during the 40-day holiday travel period,” Vice Transport Minister Li Yang said at a briefing in Beijing on Tuesday (Jan 16).
The next Lunar New Year, the Year of the Wood Dragon, is officially celebrated in mid-February, but the holiday rush will start from Jan 26 and last more than a month as workers in the cities travel home to visit family and friends.
Driving will be the most popular form of transport, according to Li, with some 7.2 billion self-driving trips expected and 1.8 billion trips made via other forms of transport, including water.
As one of the most traditional travel methods, China’s railway system is expected to see 480 million passenger trips during the holiday period, an increase of 38 per cent from 2023, when people were still getting back to travel after Covid, and 18 per cent from 2019, Huang Xin, a senior official with China State Railway Group, said.
With so many people crisscrossing the vast nation, officials also pledged efforts to ensure safety.
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“Safe Chunyun is the major theme for us this year,” Li said, using the Chinese name for Lunar New Year. “We’ve urged local governments to conduct safety checks on major transport infrastructure.”
Authorities have also required the comprehensive inspection and maintenance of all vehicles, ships and transport facilities before the holiday rush, Li added, without elaborating.
Bloomberg reported on Monday that China’s aviation regulator has temporarily halted the restart of Boeing 737 Max jet deliveries to the nation as the US planemaker grapples with a raft of safety issues.
Chinese airlines fly scores of 737 Max jets, single-aisle planes that have long been workhorses of the skies.
An accident involving a different type of Max model, a 737 Max 9, rocked Boeing earlier this month when a desk-sized door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines flight as the plane was ascending. Fortunately, no one was sucked out of the hole, but the incident has rattled consumer confidence in other Boeing models. BLOOMBERG
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