The Spring Festival transportation starts on January 14, and the railway in the Yangtze River Delta is expected to send 97 million passengers.
On January 11th, reporters from The Paper learned from China Railway Shanghai Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as China Railway Shanghai Bureau) that the Yangtze River Delta railway has recently released its Spring Festival transportation plan for 2025. The Spring Festival transportation, which lasts 40 days, is expected to send 97 million passengers with a daily average of 2.425 million passengers, a year-on-year increase of 5.1%, which is a record high in recent years. Based on the peak operation plan, the railway department of the Yangtze River Delta plans to add 398.5 passenger trains, with a maximum of over 1,700 passenger trains running on a single day during the peak period, actively coping with the large passenger flow during the Spring Festival travel rush.
On January 11th, G8388 “Super Loop” high-speed train attendants were on board inspection. Photo by Wang Yiqi
The Spring Festival travel rush starts on January 14th and lasts for 15 days before the holiday and 25 days after the holiday, totaling 40 days in 2025. This year’s Spring Festival travel rush is characterized by the superposition of student flow, family visit flow, migrant worker flow, and tourist flow, forming a passenger flow pattern dominated by rigid demand such as home-returning and school-returning, family visits, and short-distance commuting, supplemented by personalized demand for holiday cultural tourism.
Staff from the passenger department of China Railway Shanghai Bureau said that for this year’s Spring Festival travel rush, passengers in the Yangtze River Delta area have stronger travel intentions than in previous years, and it is expected to set a record high for passenger flow since the beginning of the Spring Festival travel rush. The passenger flow will reflect the following characteristics: Firstly, passenger flow will be relatively concentrated in the week before the Spring Festival and the week after the Lantern Festival; secondly, the long-distance migrant flow in key directions such as Yunnan and Guizhou will start in advance before the holiday; thirdly, most students’ return and departure dates overlap with other passenger flows, forming a situation of multiple flows overlapping in some periods before and after the holiday; fourthly, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou and other areas are still the traditional key areas during the Spring Festival travel rush before and after the holiday.
According to relevant staff from the passenger department of China Railway Shanghai Bureau, during the first 15 days of the holiday season, passenger flow in Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou region will be concentrated. High-speed railway lines such as Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Rail, Beijing-Hong Kong High-Speed Rail, Xuzhou-Lanzhou High-Speed Rail, Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Rail, Hangzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Rail, Zhengzhou-Fuyang High-Speed Rail, as well as local high-speed rail lines such as Shanghai-Nanjing Intercity High-Speed Rail, Ningbo-Hangzhou High-Speed Rail, Shanghai-Suzhou High-Speed Rail will face a large passenger flow. Starting stations such as Shanghai South Railway Station will also face a phased large passenger flow before the holiday.
During the Spring Festival travel rush, China Railway Shanghai Bureau will open an additional 398.5 pairs of passenger trains (including 250 pairs of through trains and 148.5 pairs of local trains) to supplement the popular directions. Among them, through trains are divided into basic and emergency two sets of capacity plans while local trains are divided into basic and night two sets of capacity plans.
The railway department will analyze passenger demand accurately based on ticket pre-sale and waiting list data to determine the timing of additional train launches in a timely manner and deploy capacity in a tiered manner. During the Spring Festival travel rush, the characteristics of capacity deployment are as follows: firstly, an increase in the proportion of through trains compared to the Spring Festival travel rush in 2024; secondly, the resumption of through trains to popular destinations such as Qingdao, Fuzhou, Beijing, Jingmen, Huaihua, Chongqing, Yulin and Liaocheng; thirdly, four pairs of high-speed trains running between Yangtze River Delta and Beijing and Tianjin are fully operated on weekends; fourthly, the number of additional trains and train composition plans are implemented according to “one day one map”.
In addition, during the Spring Festival travel rush period this year, some conventional hard seat trains will be upgraded to provide more sleeping accommodation options for passengers taking long distance trips. The railway department will further expand ticket discounts for non-peak times and directions by offering discounts up to 30% for conventional trains and up to 70% for high-speed trains. It is worth mentioning that there will be 60 discounted trips on reverse empty trains this year compared to last year’s Spring Festival travel rush period
