China's passenger traffic grew steadily in the first ten months of last year with a slight increase in freight traffic volume, according to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics on January 22.

The ridership between January and October reached 11.54 billion, 8.09 percent more than the figure for the same 1998 period.

The highway sector registered 10.50 billion ridership during the period, a year-on-year rise of 8.8 percent. A total of 828 million people traveled by train in the nine months, up 5.5 percent, and 53 million people traveled by air during the period, up 10.17 percent on an annual basis.

However, the waterway sector reported a year-on-year decline of17.7 percent in ridership. Only 156 million people traveled by ship during the period.

Meanwhile, total freight traffic in the January-October period reached 10.12 billion tons, up 0.66 percent.

The highway sector saw an increase of 0.4 percent to register 7.9 billion tons, the railway sector carried 1.3 billion tons of cargo, up 3.26 percent, and the freight traffic in the civil aviation sector surged 25.38 percent to 1.43 million tons.

In the meantime, the waterway sector handled 919 million tons of cargo, down 0.7 percent on an annual basis.