CRI听力:Spring Festival Travel Rush Concludes Today

Over 300 million railway trips have been made during this year's spring festival travel rush - though the latest numbers only count until the end of February.

The highest single-day travel happened on February 14th - Valentine's Day - with over 10 million trips.

Many train stations have broken their previous records for traffic volume.

Railway stations in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, recorded the largest seasonal departure and arrival surges, both by over 25 percent compared to last year's festival travel rush.

Gou Xuehua with Nanchang railway Administration provides some further details.

"There have been 23 and a half million trips in our station during the spring festival period time, a jump of 15 percent compared with last year. Most of those trips were made by migrant workers, students and people visiting relatives. In addition, more and more people are choosing bullet trains over regular ones. The bullet trains we've provided accounted for over 60 percent of total traffic."

Another highlight in this year's Spring Festival travel rush is that nearly 60 percent of people booked tickets online using their cellphones.

The percentage of online, mobile bookings was over 80 percent in the Yangtze River delta area.

Not only can passengers buy train tickets via mobile apps, train stations have also provided information inquiry services using social media platforms such as Wechat and Sina Weibo.
The services were well received by passengers.

"Now I can get the information I need with some simple clicks on my phone, including the right waiting room and where to check in and such. That's very convenient, and has saved me from lots of unnecessary troubles."

As a part of creating intelligent train stations, the apps also provide services including details on train delays, waiting room check-ins, surrounding area traffic information, and special services to order food.

Zhengzhou railway station even developed a nationwide real time transportation monitoring app, applying big data technology which shows a map of China displaying the number of people on the road via different travel modes.

Passenger Wang Jiawen says she found the app to be very helpful.

"I think the big-data-map thing is really interesting. Through that, I can get the information about how many people are traveling on the road using what kind of means of transportation. I find that very useful."

It is a tradition for the Chinese people to travel for family reunions during the Lunar New Year festival, creating the world's largest annual human migration. This year, the travel period started on January 24th and, as usual, it lasted for 40 days.