The world's largest annual migration will begin in China from tomorrow with a large chunk of its 1.3 billion population set to travel home to celebrate Lunar New Year, the most important festival in the country.
China's massive road, rail and air networks are struggling to handle 3.6 billion passenger journeys during the 40-day celebrations for the Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival which falls on January 31.
Authorities are expecting this year passenger volume to be 200 million more that that of last year.
The present capacity of the transport system could not fully meet the peak festival demand, Lian Weiliang, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters. "Therefore it will still be difficult to get a ticket in some regions during the period."
Police have detained 582 suspects for online ticket scalping and confiscated over 33,000 tickets in a crackdown on ticket hoarding ahead of the travel rush.
Every year, China's most of the work force, mainly the migrant workers who formed part of its global success as a manufacturing hub, travel to their villages to spend time with families during the Spring Festival.
The rush expected to last from January 16 to February 24.
Among the various means of public transportation, the railway sector, which carried out structural reform last year, faces the most challenges. It has received a deluge of complaints about the difficulty in procuring a train ticket.
Hu Yadong, a vice general manager of the China Railway Corporation, was quoted in the state-run Global Times today that 258 million trips are estimated to be made by railways for the new year, an increase of 7.9 per cent.
Many analysts have noted while efficiency needs improving, the reason behind such huge numbers of travellers at this time is due to an economic imbalance across the nation.
Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, said to address the deep-rooted cause, it is critical to accelerate the urbanisation drive and foster metropolitan clusters, in which urban areas spread out to the hinterland of larger cities.
"By relocating the migrants' families to small and medium cities or towns on the outskirts of large cities, this will largely ease the transport pressure," Zhao said.
In addition to the railway sector, the decision to continue charging highway tolls on the New Year's Eve, January 30, has also caused frustration.
Most regions will allow toll-free journeys from midnight January 31 when the public holidays officially begin.
