Railway trips surge during Spring Festival travel rush

BEIJING -- More passengers have traveled by train since the Spring Festival travel rush, or "Chunyun," which began on Jan 13, official data showed Monday.

As of Sunday, 208 million trips had been taken by train, up more than 12 percent from last year, according to China Railway Corp. (CRC) on Monday.

On Sunday alone, over 10 million passenger trips were made by train, according to the CRC.

This will likely moderately reduce to 9.2 million Monday as the Lunar New Year holiday ended Thursday, the CRC said.

During the New Year holiday, hundreds of millions of people go back to their hometowns, putting huge stress on the transportation system, despite improvements in infrastructure over the last few years.

The CRC announced it would schedule 812 additional trains on Monday.