Highway Passenger Flow Rises During Spring Festival Holiday -- china.org.cn

Despite heavy fog that disrupted highway traffic in north China, the country still reported a flow of 25.76 million highway passengers on Wednesday, the fourth day of China's lunar New Year holiday season.

Yesterday's passenger flow was 4.35 million more than Tuesday and 20.3 percent higher than last year's same day, according to the Ministry of Communications.

Communications authorities put 650,000 buses in service to meet the rising passenger flow as many people would visit their relatives and friends during the seven days of the Spring Festival holiday, which began on February 18 this year.

Migrant workers who left home for cities also contributed to the rising passenger flow, according to communications authorities.

China's highways are expected to transport 2 billion passengers during the Spring Festival period that began on February 3 and will end on March 14, up 5 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Communications.

From February 18 to February 21, the first four days of the week-long Spring Festival holiday, 276 million visited friends or went out for sight-seeing by ship, up 5.3 percent year-on-year.

Sections of seven Beijing and 10 Tianjin highways were closed after thick fog smothered north China on Wednesday morning.

The highway from Beijing to Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, and six other highways passing through Beijing were closed after the visibility in some areas was as low as 50 meters.

The Tianjin municipal observatory reported visibility to be as low as 30 meters on some road sections.

As of 6:00 PM, the Beijing Capital International Airport had canceled 190 flights due to the heavy fog, including 91 arrival flights and 99 departure flights.

(Xinhua News Agency February 22, 2007)