Briefing 2: The Upcoming Big Rush over Spring Festival

Chunyun (the Spring Festival Peak Travel Period) starts later in 2024, and over a larger network...

Swiss people like to plan ahead and value consistency, and usually, Chinese national railways hold their annual work conference at the very start of the year. So this year, when it was apparently delayed — even for a week — this Swiss was more than a little concerned about “how the railways are doing”…

Meanwhile, there’s a lot coming ahead in terms of how the railways are doing. If you work the railways, you’re getting one thing after the other happening to you: familiarising with the new 10 January 2024 timetables, and, merely 16 days after, the start of the annual Chunyun, or Spring Festival Peak Travel Period (or peak travel season).

The Chinese railways are coming in with impressive results over the (Gregorian) New Year long weekend (30 December 2023 – 01 January 2024). Including the day immediately before the holiday as well as immediately following it, Chinese national railways saw 70.2 million rides, which on average was around 14.04 million a day. This was a year-in-year increase of 171% — remember, this time last year, China went through the “exit wave” of Covid-19 infections as its unpopular Zero Covid diktats were finally abandoned, meaning people were less mobile. The railways alone managed a 33.7% market share of the transport market this past New Year’s Day long weekend break.

One set of figures usually skimmed over were just how many trains were running during these 5 days. Of the 10’881 passenger trains in service, 9’102 of these were considered High Speed (in actual fact “electric multiple unit” trains, but it’s almost synonymous with HSR). This would translate to an almost 83.7% market share for High Speed. As China heads into its 16th year with 300+ km/h passenger rail services, it’s time to reflect on just how far we’ve come…