Today is the twelfth day of the first lunar month, and the return journey of the Spring Festival travel rush continues. After railway passenger flow peaked on the eighth day, it has shown a day-by-day downward trend. What characteristics will today's railway passenger flow present? Let us get a sense of it through the Spring Festival travel heat map.

　　Railway passenger flow has declined for four consecutive days

　　Judging from today's (the 21st) Spring Festival travel heat map, railway passenger flow is expected to drop by about 10% compared with yesterday, marking a decline for four consecutive days.

　　Arrivals in 43 cities today fell compared with yesterday

　　Pre-sale ticket data from 12306 show that arrivals in 43 cities today fell compared with yesterday. Among them, arrivals in Shanghai are already less than half of the peak level, as most people have returned to their workplaces. Arrivals in 10 provincial capital cities, including Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xi'an, Zhengzhou and Wuhan, have also declined for three consecutive days. In addition, more than 20 cities saw their first post-holiday decline in arrivals, such as Hefei, Urumqi and Wuxi, with more second-tier cities appearing on this list.

　　Popular railway routes remain dominated by intra-regional travel

　　At the same time, judging from railway ticket sales, Harbin to Beijing has entered the top ten popular routes for the first time. Other popular routes are mainly intra-regional flows, including Guangzhou to Shenzhen, Dali to Kunming, Suzhou to Shanghai, and Beijing to Tianjin.

　　Cross-city passenger flow peaked around the seventh day

　　What overall trend has mobile China shown after the holiday? Together with China Mobile's Wutong Big Data, we analyzed the flow trends of people's cross-city travel and found that passenger flow gradually rose from the first day and peaked around the seventh day of the first lunar month, then began to decline.

　　If we divide the flow of people into return trips, sightseeing trips and trips back to hometowns, we can see that sightseeing travelers accounted for a larger proportion from the first day until the fifth day, when return trips surpassed sightseeing trips to become the largest group and gradually increased. Overall, the proportion of return passenger flow in total passenger flow rose from about one quarter on the second day to more than 60% now.

　　Migrant workers' return trips accelerate

　　Data on waitlist train tickets applied for today on the 12306 platform show that, as migrant workers' return trips accelerate, the popular destinations for waitlist tickets have gradually expanded from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to cities such as Guiyang, Hangzhou, Jinhua and Ningbo.

　　Urban service capacity has recovered to more than 80%

　　In addition, by analyzing the return-to-work situation of urban service personnel, we found that as of the eleventh day of the first lunar month, more than 70% of ride-hailing drivers, food delivery riders and couriers who had returned to their hometowns before the holiday had returned to their posts, and overall urban service capacity had recovered to more than 80% of the pre-Spring Festival level.