China's railway network sets new passenger trip record

As of Monday, China's railway network has handled over 300 million passenger trips in the past 25 days during the on-going Spring Festival travel rush, and extra services have been operated to meet the surge demand for travel, the national railway operator China State Railway Group said on Tuesday.

The 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, began on Jan 26, is the world's largest annual human migration.

On Monday, 14.04 million passenger trips were made via the national railway network. Some 13.3 million trips are expected to be made on Tuesday, with an addition of 1,716 train services planned.

During the eight-day Spring Festival holiday, which ended on Saturday, a total of 99.46 million passenger trips were made via the railway network. On Saturday, the last day of the holiday, a record of nearly 16.07 million trips were made, setting a new record of the daily passenger volume in China's railway system.

According to the company, the surge of travel demand will remain in the following days.

The 40-day travel rush, a traditional holiday migration for family reunions and celebrations, will run until March 5. The Ministry of Transport anticipates a record-breaking 9 billion passenger trips overall during the period. Among them, 480 million passenger trips are expected to be made via the railway system.