SHENZHEN, China (Reuters) – China notched a record 9.02 billion domestic trips during the 40-day Lunar New Year travel rush, the state Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday, surpassing the 8.4 billion trips taken in the same holiday period a year earlier.
The travel rush during China’s biggest holiday is often read as a barometer for the country’s economic health and a pressure test for its vast transportation system. The rise in travel was in line with expectations.
Some 513 million train trips were taken during the Spring Festival, as the holiday is known in China, up 6.1% on last year, while 90.2 million passengers travelled by air, up 7.4%, according to Xinhua.
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Annual tallies of trips made during the annual travel rush have jumped since the Ministry of Transport revised the metric before the 2023 Lunar New Year to include self-driving road trips on major national expressways.
A total of 2.98 billion trips were recorded in the 2019 Spring Festival travel rush, the year before COVID-19 pandemic restrictions hampered travel.
(Reporting by David Kirton; Editing by Tom Hogue)
