The 40-day annual travel peak around the bustling traditional Chinese Spring Festival period will come to an end this weekend, with declining numbers of passengers being handled by roads and railways.

The Ministry of Communications said here Thursday that about 46million journeys were made by road on Wednesday, dropping three million from Tuesday.

The ministry said the number of road passengers will continue to drop and the flow on Thursday is expected to be around 45 million, one million less than Wednesday.

The railway stations around China also transported fewer passengers in the last couple of days. Students returning to school dropped to 230,000 on Feb. 10, less than half of the peak student flow of 495,000 on Feb. 7.

But the Ministry of Railways said that the current daily passengers on trains still maintained a daily average of over 3.5 million persons.

But as the total flow is dropping, said the ministry, it has stopped the price floating launched in the Spring Festival travel peak for reducing passenger numbers on some direct-trip trains.

Amid the peak passenger period, China's transportation departments also took strict measures to contain the possible spread of bird flu through vehicles.

At the same time, the ministries also enhanced supervision to halt traffic violation activities. The Ministry of Communications said all illegal tollgates on road and destruction to the road are not permitted, so as to ensure smoother traffic on road across China, especially on roads near the bird-flu affected areas.

Currently, no such case of illegal toll-gates and traffic violation has been found around the country, said the ministry.

(Xinhua News Agency February13, 2004)