World’s Biggest Human Migration Begins in China
The 40-days are celebration time for the Chinese people, who head towards their home to celebrate the Lunar New Year Spring Festival with their family members.
In China, the Lunar New Year has already started and with this start, the country is also bracing itself for the annual homecoming of its epic proportions population, which is considered the largest human migration on the planet.
The Spring Festival, ‘Chunyun’, officially started on January 10 will ends on February 18. The 40-days are celebration time for the Chinese people, who head towards their home to celebrate the Lunar New Year Spring Festival with their family members.
This year the Lunar New Year begins on January 25 and this means the beginning of rush for Spring Festival also begins with the workers across the country start their journey towards home and it is also the peak time when colleges across the country start their winter holidays.
Therefore during this 2020 Chunyun period, some 3 billion trips are expected to be made, which is a slight increase from last year's figures 2.99 billion trips. Of the 3 billion trips, 2.43 billion trips will be made by automobile, 440 million by rail, 79 million by air and 45 million by sea.
China already boasts itself as the world’s largest rail network with 8,489 kilometers (about 5,275 miles) of new railway lines built in the year 2019, which also includes 5,474 kilometers of tracks for high-speed rail.
The Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed railway with driverless bullet trains is operating at 350 kilometers per hour and the Chengdu-Guiyang high-speed railway which is soon opening, will also ease the normally heavy road traffic in the northern and western regions of China.
Some 5,275 pairs of train services are operating per day before the Lunar New Year holiday and as the holidays begin 5,410 pairs of train services are now operational. A total of around 157.5 pairs of high-speed trains will be deployed at the night during the peak period.
Li Wenxin, Deputy General Manager of the China State Railway Group Co. Ltd said, “Comparing to Chunyun last year, ticket shortage problems for some of the most popular routes have been alleviated. It’s easier to get tickets [this year].”
New technology is also playing an important role in easing the congestion at railway stations, highways and airports. More than 1,000 train stations in the country have been installed with the e-ticket check-in system to speed up the ticketing procedures.
Last year also saw the opening of the long-awaited Beijing Daxing International Airport. The Civil Aviation Administration of China estimates that the new airport in the capital city will ferry more than 190 million passengers during the Lunar New Year period, with 15% more flights than usual. Airports around China have scheduled at least 17,000 flights every day, which is 13.3% higher than last year, to deal with the traffic.
In addition, other modes of transportation are also being explored. The chief engineer of the Ministry of Transport, Wang Yang, said that about 790,000 buses and 19,000 boats would also be utilized to ferry home-comers. Just before the Spring Festival rush, the country has implemented an electronic collection system at all the tollbooths at provincial borders.