Nearly double the number of passenger trips are expected to be made during this year's Spring Festival travel rush compared with last year, a transportation official said.

About 2 billion passenger trips are expected to be made during the upcoming holiday rush, Vice-Minister of Transport Xu Chengguang said at a news conference on Friday.

The volume of passenger trips will see a year-on-year increase of 99.5 percent, roughly 70.3 percent of the volume in 2019.

Prior to the COVID-19 epidemic in 2019, 2.98 billion passenger trips were made during the travel rush.

This year's 40-day travel rush will start on Jan 7 and end on Feb 15.