Spring Festival traffic significantly down this year

Trips made during the weeklong Spring Festival holiday saw a significant drop this year due to intensified epidemic containment measures.

According to the State Council's Spring Festival travel rush office, 98.42 million passenger trips were made from Feb 11 to Wednesday, a year-on-year decline of 34.8 percent.

It was a 76.8 percent decrease compared with the number of passenger trips in 2019.

In 2019, 421 million passenger trips were made during the holiday.

Spring Festival is the most important holiday for family reunion in China, which usually leads to huge levels of traffic. This year, people are encouraged to stay put and avoid traveling to contain the cluster of COVID-19 cases.

Of all the trips during the holiday, 24.06 million were made by rail, 67.85 million by road, 2.94 million by water and 3.57 million by aircraft, a decline of 60.2 percent, 79.9 percent, 76.8 percent and 71.7 percent compared with 2019.

The 40-day Spring Festival travel rush started on Jan 28 and will end on March 8.