On January 26, the 40-day 2024 Spring Festival officially kicked off, and news related to the Spring Festival has become a topic of conversation. The observation that the homecoming motorcycle army is "no longer in full swing" quickly appeared on the hot search, evoking the memories and emotions of countless people on the way home for the Spring Festival, and triggering a positive discussion on the construction of China's road network and the continuous improvement of the level of economic and social development.
As the saying goes, if you have money but don't have money to go home for the New Year, in Guangdong more than 20 years ago, on the eve of the Spring Festival, hundreds of thousands of people riding motorcycles and carrying luggage will be staged through National Highway 321, through Zhaoqing City, all the way west to go home for the New Year. They are affectionately known as the "Iron Cavalry Army" and the "Motor Cavalry Army". At the 2013 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, a public welfare short film about the return of the motorcycle army brought tears to the eyes of hundreds of millions of Chinese people in front of the TV set on Chinese New Year's Eve.
At that time, the mighty way home of the "motorcycle army" was touching and full of difficulties. It is the touching nostalgia of the wanderer's homecoming, and it is also the concrete reality of the Spring Festival transportation "a ticket is hard to find" and "the road network is not passable", and it is a life choice that many migrant workers have to make in order to save fares.
Now, according to public reports, data from the Guangdong Provincial Transportation Department in 2022 shows that the "motorcycle army" people who ride motorcycles to and from Guangxi, Guizhou and other places via Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, have shown a significant downward trend year by year since reaching a peak of about 1.1 million vehicles during the Spring Festival in 2013. In Foshan, Zhaoqing and other places in Guangdong along National Highway 321, the "sporadic riders" make people really feel that the motorcycle army is gradually becoming a memory with the change of urban development.
The disappearing army of motorcycles has become a hot topic because this special team has touched countless people, and it is a "special existence" in the huge population migration of the Spring Festival, carrying the memory of the Spring Festival for a generation. Its disappearance is the most vivid and vivid development story of China's road network, high-speed rail and other facilities in the past ten years, and the continuous improvement of people's living standards.
By the end of 2022, the total length of the national comprehensive transportation network exceeded 6 million kilometers; The total mileage of highways reached 5.35 million kilometers, of which 17 were opened to traffic70,000 kilometers, ranking first in the world; The completion rate of the national comprehensive three-dimensional transportation network is about 786%, the completion rate of the main skeleton line is about 87%; Build the world's largest high-speed railway network, highway network, world-class port group, aviation and navigation to the world; China's high-speed railway, China Road, China Bridge, and China Port have become beautiful "Chinese business cards".
The data records the brilliance of China's transportation construction and development, and the travel choices and feelings of ordinary people are the most vivid presentation of the expansion of China's road network. From riding a motorcycle across thousands of miles to go home for the New Year to self-driving has become the most popular way to travel, from squeezing the green train station for a night to taking the high-speed rail to see "poetry and distance", from "queuing up all night to grab tickets" to "pointing a little and saying go", more and more convenient and perfect transportation, pressing the "express button" for people to go home for the New Year, making people completely become the story of the past in embarrassment.
The annual Spring Festival can be described as a mirror of economic and social development. The cross-regional flow of people across the country is expected to reach 9 billion, the average daily traffic of the highway network is expected to reach 37.2 million per day, and the national railway is expected to send 4800 million ......Behind the 2024 Spring Festival transportation data, there is a strong and enduring flavor of the year, and it also reflects the accumulated infrastructure and transportation capacity.
Some spectacular Spring Festival phenomena have disappeared, which is worth paying attention to, but there is no need to be melancholy, because new forces are growing, new developments are emerging, and new stories are being written.
Upstream news commentator Yao Li.