China's holiday passengers up 3.5 pct to 2.81 bln

Passengers are seen on a platform of Nanjing Railway Station in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, Feb. 11, 2015. Chinese railways, roads, airlines and waterways carried a total of 2.81 billion passengers during the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, known as "chunyun," which concluded on Sunday. (Xinhua/Su Yang)

Chinese railways, roads, airlines and waterways carried a total of 2.81 billion passengers during the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, known as "chunyun," which concluded on Sunday.

The figure is 3.5 percent up on last year, the Ministry of Transport (MOT) said on Monday.

A total of 2.42 billion passengers traveled by road while 295 million chose to travel by rail. Passengers on waterways reached 42.84 million. Online ticketing and internet network coverage of trains have improved services.

Han Shuqing, deputy chief of China Railway's department of planning and statistics, said that high-speed trains have became a major force.

High-speed train passengers accounted for 41.4 percent of rail passengers this year, according to the MOT. High-speed services alleviated pressure at peak times, said Song Jianguo, deputy Party secretary of Beijing West Railway Station.

The Beijing Public Transport authorities added over 200 buses to the capital city's railway and bus stations as well as Beijing Capital International Airport.

Airlines carried nearly 49.2 million passengers, up 11.7 percent, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said on Monday. Airlines operated 360,000 flights during the period, up 9.3 percent. With a combined average of 1.91 million seats available each day, the airlines comfortably met demand. On both Feb. 23 and Feb. 24, the airlines carried more than 1.35 million passengers, an all-time daily high, according to the CAAC.

The megacities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen saw the most passenger departures during the first half of chunyun as people returned to their hometowns. In contrast, airports in the southwest and northeast were busiest towards the end of the 40-day period as tens of millions returned to work or school.

The Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, which fell on Feb. 19 this year, is traditionally a time for family reunions, but tourist cities like Haikou, Sanya, Kunming and Lijiang continued to be hot destinations.

The Spring Festival holiday usually lasts seven days for office workers and a month for students.