During the one-month period after China launched its largest scale railway speed increase on April 18, all trains across the country carried 93.22 million passengers,up 5 percent on a year-on-year basis, according to the Ministry of Railways.

Statistics show 28.77 million passengers took mid and long-distance trains during the period, up 16.8 percent year on year, and 180.2 million tons of goods were transported by railway, growing 6.4 percent.

During the month period, 99.8 percent of all passenger trains left their stations punctually and 96.1 percent reached their destinations on time.

This was the fifth large-scale railway speed increase taken by China since 1997 and it involved adding over 3,500 kilometers of new lines into its express railway network and raising the speeds of its major lines to 160 kilometers per hour.