Introduction to the 2016 Spring Festival

The 2016 Spring Festival Transport starts on January 24 (the fifteenth day of the twelfth lunar month in the lunar calendar) and ends on March 3 (the twenty-fifth day of the first lunar month in the Bingshen (Monkey) year of the lunar calendar)1. The National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Public Security, and the State Administration of Work Safety recently jointly issued a notice requiring all localities to conscientiously do a good job in the 2016 Spring Festival Transport. The "Notice" pointed out that after consultation with relevant departments, it is predicted that the number of passengers sent during the Spring Festival in 2016 will reach 2.91 billion. The passenger flow during the Spring Festival will continue to grow, but the growth rate will slow down. 2On March 3, 2016, the 40-day Spring Festival travel period came to a successful end. During the Spring Festival in 2016, the number of passengers nationwide exceeded 2.91 billion, an increase of 3.8% over the same period last year. 3 During the Spring Festival, the railway passenger volume was 326 million, a year-on-year increase of 1.08%; the road passenger volume was 2.495 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.3%; the waterway passenger volume was 42.6 million passengers, a year-on-year decrease of 0.6; during the 2016 Spring Festival, civil aviation carried 53.093 million passengers, a year-on-year increase of 8.