As the 2019 Spring Festival travel rush officially kicked off on Jan. 21, multiple organizations have rolled out big data reports, revealing changes in the “largest annual human migration on the planet” over the years.

According to a report on ticket booking over the Spring Festival period, released by Chinese internet security company Qihoo 360, 72.5 percent of passengers chose regular trains in 2017, and only 27.5 percent booked high-speed train tickets.

However, a recent big data report indicated that this year, a higher percentage of passengers have chosen to travel by high-speed train.

China newly added 4,000 kilometers of rail to its railway network in 2018, 3,500 kilometers of which were for high-speed trains. The country had 3,819 pairs of trains in 2017, while the figure rose to 4,536 last year. Eighty-eight percent of the newly launched locomotives were bullet trains.

Thanks to increasing income and changes in consumer values, rail is not the only way for people to get home. More people are returning home by air, road, and even bike, which to some extent relieves traffic pressure during the Spring Festival season.

In 2018, 5,000 kilometers of express road opened to traffic in China. 16,000 and 200,000 kilometers of provincial and country roads were renovated, revealed statistics from China’s Ministry of Transportation.

Six years ago, only 30.8 percent of tickets were sold through PC and mobile platforms, while in 2018 the percentage rose to 70, said a big data report jointly issued by news and information content platform Toutiao and China Railway.

Around 14 million tickets will be sold in a single day during the Spring Festival travel rush this year, with 80 percent of tickets distributed through online ticketing platform 12306, said Shan Xinghua, deputy chief engineer from the Institute of Computing Technology of China Academy of Railway Sciences Corporation Limited at a recent scientific innovation exhibition held by China Railway.