China's total passenger trips during this year's Spring Festival are forecast to increase by 99.5 percent over 2022, to about 2.095 billion, Xu Chengguang, vice minister of transport, told a news briefing on Friday.

He said this year's holiday travel rush, from January 7 to February 15, lasting for 40 days, is the most complex and challenging travel rush with many uncertainties due to the coronavirus and the huge number of travelers.

He illustrated the four challenges and risks facing the transport sector. Firstly, he pointed out that as China optimized the COVID-19 control measures and downgrade the virus from Class A to Class B, people's demand for cross-province travel like visiting family members and friends, going back hometowns for holidays and traveling for sightseeing will surge, which will put the transportation sector on full load.

He estimated that the total number of passenger trips during the Spring Festival travel rush will recover to 70.3 percent of that in 2019. And in the Spring Festival travel flow, people who visit family members and relatives account for about 55%, migrant workers account for about 24%, and business trips and travel account for about 10%, Xu added.

The second challenge the transport sector must face is to guarantee logistics during the Spring Festival as the demand for freight transport has increased significantly. According to Xu, the Spring Festival travel rush in previous years usually saw an increase in customers and a decrease in goods, but as the epidemic peak has not yet passed, the demand for various medical and epidemic prevention supplies, holiday supplies, energy, food and other key materials will see a great increase. 

He notified that in small cities and rural areas where the logistics distribution foundation is relatively weak, the terminal distribution may not be smooth to a lack of employees who will leave their jobs on holidays or will have to recuperate if they get infected.

Xu also warned about the risks front-line employees in the transport sector will face during Spring Festival season, saying the risk of getting infected has increased rapidly due to the dense flow of people and frequent freight logistics activities, which will be a considerable test for the transport sector to ensure uninterrupted passenger services and continuous freight logistics during holidays.

Lastly, Xu said the ministry also has to take preventive measures to handle possible production incidents as industries have been out of service or in a state of low-load operation for a very long time and workers' skills may have become rusty because of the repeated impact of COVID-19. In addition, low temperatures, cold waves, rain, snow, freezing and other adverse weather will also bring safety risks.

Facing all the challenges and difficulties, the State Council has outlined clear arrangements for the work of transportation, asking all levels of transport agencies to prepare for the upcoming Spring Festival travel rush with “the highest standards, the most stringent requirements and the most concrete measures". According to Xu, all preparations are now in place.