More snow looms for China amid transport crunch

By Lindsay Beck

BEIJING (Reuters) - More snowy weather was forecast for parts of China in the coming days, threatening to snarl transport at the height of holiday travel and hampering the country's efforts to return to normality after its worst winter in decades.

China is expected to see railway traffic peak on Tuesday, the last day of Spring Festival, as the Lunar New Year holiday is known, when millions head back to work from their villages.

"Post-Spring Festival railway traffic peak saw more than 5 million passengers in one day last year and we expect more in 2008," Xinhua news agency on Monday quoted the Railways Ministry as saying.

The travel crunch comes as China's transport systems are only just creaking back to life after freak cold and ice storms hit swathes of the country, causing billions of dollars in damage and killing at least 80 people.

"The overall transport situation is still relatively grim, especially problems of capacity and demand emerging in railway transport," the State Council's command centre for dealing with the disaster said in a statement.

"All regions and all government departments concerned must pay high attention to the work of post-holiday transport," said the statement, posted on the government's Web site (www.gov.cn).

In most of the country, transport, power generation and food supplies were back to normal by the weekend after weeks of the unusually harsh winter weather.

The State Council's centre has reported that food prices, which soared due to the combination of fierce weather and holiday demand, have generally stabilised, but on Monday it urged stepped up vegetable production to compensate for agricultural losses.