Reporters learned from the routine press conference of the Ministry of Transport held on March 25 that from January to February this year, major transportation indicators such as investment, freight volume, and port cargo throughput showed a significant increase compared with the same period last year. Among them, the investment in transportation fixed assets was 303.2 billion yuan, an increase of 71.7% over the same period in 2020 and 11.6% over the same period in 2019. Due to the combined influence of low base numbers and local New Year celebrations, the commercial passenger volume has dropped significantly.

This is the first offline press conference held by the Ministry of Transport after the outbreak of the epidemic. Sun Wenjian, spokesperson of the Ministry and deputy director of the Policy Research Office, introduced that from January to February this year, the investment in roads and waterways reached 237.9 billion yuan, an increase of 93.9% over the same period in 2020 and 16.6% over the same period in 2019; the commercial passenger volume reached 1.24 billion, a decrease of 15% over the same period in 2020 and 58.7% over the same period in 2019; the public transportation passenger volume in 36 central cities across the country reached 7.41 billion, an increase of 50.4% over the same period in 2020 and a decrease of 25.4% over the same period in 2019.

In terms of freight, from January to February this year, the country completed 6.76 billion tons of commercial freight volume, an increase of 48.3% over the same period in 2020 and 15.8% over the same period in 2019; the port cargo throughput was 2.3 billion tons, an increase of 20.3% over the same period in 2020 and 13.3% over the same period in 2019; the container throughput was 42.36 million TEUs, an increase of 22% over the same period in 2020 and 9.2% over the same period in 2019.

The Qingming Festival holiday is approaching, and toll roads across the country will continue to waive tolls for small passenger cars with 7 seats or less, from 00:00 on April 3 to 24:00 on April 5. The Ministry of Transport will guide local transportation departments to comprehensively analyze passenger flow trends and travel characteristics, effectively strengthen transportation supply, improve transportation capacity, reduce crowds, and do a good job in epidemic prevention and control, so as to ensure safe and convenient travel for the people.

Recently, people traveling across the country no longer need to provide nucleic acid test certificates and quarantine measures. In this regard, Sun Wenjian said that the Ministry of Transport will continue to do a good job in normalized epidemic prevention and control in transportation, consolidate the hard-won epidemic prevention results, do a good job in normalized epidemic prevention and control in different regions and levels, and guide local transportation departments to urge road passenger transport companies and passenger transport operators to resume the implementation of the fourth edition of the "Guidelines for Regional and Graded Prevention and Control of COVID-19 in Passenger Transport Terminals and Transportation Vehicles".

At the press conference, Sun Wenjian also answered reporters' questions on the achievements of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei transportation integration development, future rural road development arrangements, and the protection of the Yangtze River.