9 billion people migrated, and Spring Festival travel rush will have these differences in 2025.

　　"I’m going back to my hometown for the New Year!"

　　At 00: 02 a.m. on January 14th, the K4159 train slowly left Beijing West Railway Station, and the first passenger train in Beijing, Spring Festival travel rush officially set off in 2025.

　　The 40-day Spring Festival travel rush 2025 also officially kicked off. According to the data of the comprehensive transportation Spring Festival travel rush working class in 2025, it is estimated that on January 14th, 2025 (the first day of Spring Festival travel rush, the 15th day of the twelfth lunar month), the cross-regional mobility of the whole society will be 172.39 million, including 10.3 million railway passengers and 159.52 million highway passengers (131.7 million non-operating passenger cars and 27.82 million highway passengers).

　　The annual Spring Festival travel rush bears Chinese’s deep homesickness and rich emotional memories. What are the new changes in Spring Festival travel rush this year compared with the past?

　　9 billion passengers, passenger flow is expected to hit a record high.

　　According to the forecast of the Ministry of Transport and other departments, the cross-regional mobility of the whole society in Spring Festival travel rush will reach 9 billion person-times this year, which is about 7% higher than that in Spring Festival travel rush in 2024. The passenger traffic of railways and civil aviation is expected to exceed 510 million and 90 million respectively, both hitting record highs. Before and after the 8-day Spring Festival holiday, four kinds of passenger flows, such as students, workers, visiting relatives and tourists, are intertwined, and the passenger flow concentration is high.

　　As the "main force" of Spring Festival travel rush, the railway goes all out to improve its transport capacity. Zhu Wenzhong, head of China State Railway Group Co.,Ltd. Passenger Transport Department, said that the railway will arrange more than 14,000 passenger trains every day, with an increase of about 500,000 seats every day, and the passenger capacity will increase by about 4% year-on-year, so as to fully protect the travel needs of the majority of passengers.

　　In terms of air transport, there will be about 18,500 daily flights in Spring Festival travel rush in 2025, an increase of 8.4% year-on-year. Qing Xu, director of the Transportation Department of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said that among the major international hub airports, the planned volume of two flights in Beijing increased by more than 5%, and the planned volume of two flights in Shanghai and Chengdu also increased to some extent.

　　The highway plays an important role of "covering the bottom" and will dynamically allocate passenger lines. It is estimated that during the period of Spring Festival travel rush, the average daily traffic of expressways in China will be about 38.5 million, which is about 0.5% higher than that of Spring Festival travel rush in 2024. The whole Spring Festival travel rush traffic peak is expected to appear on the penultimate day of the Spring Festival holiday, that is, February 3rd (the sixth day of the first month).

　　In terms of water transport, the passenger ro-ro transport in Qiongzhou Strait of Spring Festival travel rush attracts much attention every year. It is estimated that during the period of Spring Festival travel rush this year, the transportation of people and vehicles entering and leaving the island will continue to grow. Before the holiday, people mainly enter the island, and the peak time is expected to appear on the 24th to 28th of the twelfth lunar month. After the holiday, the return trip to the outlying islands is highly concentrated, and the peak time is expected to appear on the 4th to 10th day of the first month, and the peak traffic volume is 2-3 times of the usual daily average traffic volume.

　　Science and technology escort, ticket purchase is convenient to a new level

　　Small tickets are the concern of thousands of homecoming people. According to Railway 12306, since Spring Festival travel rush tickets were sold on December 31, 2024, by 16: 00 on the 12th, 75.74 million tickets had been sold during Spring Festival travel rush.

　　Passengers who have bought this year’s Spring Festival travel rush train tickets can easily find that there are many new functions on the railway 12306. In December, 2024, the mobile phone client of Railway 12306 launched the booking service for students and migrant workers. Through the "booking service" area, eligible passengers can book round-trip tickets for Spring Festival travel rush in 2025.

　　In addition, Railway 12306 has also set up a special area of "Optimizing the Pre-filling of Ticket Information", and launched the function of "System Automatically Submitting Ticket Orders" on the basis of pre-filling of ticket information in the long-distance section ticket sales of trains from stations in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces to stations in Sichuan and Chongqing.

　　New hardware, new railway lines and new equipment.

　　Ticket sales are changing, and transportation capacity is also changing. In addition to the software, the hardware facilities of the railway system are also updated simultaneously.

　　New railway lines and new equipment appear. This year, Spring Festival travel rush has newly opened high-speed rail lines such as Husu Lake and Jidayuan, which will play an important supporting role in key areas such as Beijing and Shanghai. Before Spring Festival travel rush, 185 sets of newly-built Fuxing EMUs with a speed of 350km/h were put into use, which provided mobile equipment support and support for Spring Festival travel rush.

　　Capacity will be increased in key areas and peak hours. Before the festival, in Beijing, Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou, Guangzhou-Shenzhen and other areas with concentrated passenger flow, 1,724 pairs of long-distance passenger trains were arranged daily, an increase of 64 pairs year-on-year; At the peak of passenger flow, 329 pairs of long-distance high-speed trains were arranged at night, an increase of 38 pairs over the same period of last year.

　　After the holiday, in Chengdu-Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanchang, Hunan and other areas with concentrated passenger flow, 871 pairs of long-distance passenger trains were arranged every day, an increase of 46 pairs over the same period of last year; At the peak of passenger flow, 170 pairs of long-distance high-speed trains were arranged at night, an increase of 31 pairs.

　　Driving home by car, the service area basically achieves full coverage of charging facilities.

　　According to a recent press conference held by the State Council Office, Spring Festival travel rush’s self-driving travel will remain the dominant position this year, which is expected to reach 7.2 billion person-times, accounting for about 80% of the cross-regional mobility of the whole society, and the traffic volume on expressways will peak in a single day or hit a record high.

　　In recent years, new energy vehicles have developed rapidly, and more and more new energy vehicles can be seen on the way home. Will Spring Festival travel rush’s highway charging piles be enough this year? According to Gao Bo, head of the Transportation Service Department of the Ministry of Transport, the proportion of expressway service areas with charging facilities in China has increased from 85% at the end of 2023 to 97%. Except for a few high-altitude service areas, it has basically achieved full coverage.

　　In order to ensure the charging service along the highway, on the one hand, the transportation department guides all localities to speed up the construction of charging infrastructure along the highway, on the other hand, it establishes a dispatching guarantee mechanism for the busy charging service area of the expressway on major holidays to meet the charging demand of new energy vehicles to the greatest extent. For example, in accelerating the application of fast charging and high-power facilities, fast charging facilities of 120 kW and above are widely used in expressway service areas all over the country, and 600-800 kW super charging stations have been built in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Guangdong and other provinces to meet the demand of short-term fast charging as much as possible.

　　"The bus is getting faster and the station is getting new, but my favorite is always the way home." The curtain of Spring Festival travel rush is opened, and a steaming "flowing epic" is reopened. I wish you a pleasant journey!