2024届高考英语外刊阅读学案：春运倒计时！

文章导读： 高校陆续迎来寒假，很多同学踏上了回家之路。车站和车厢里全是活力满满的大学生，他们的友善和活力也让路途增添了几分温暖与欢乐。自此，铁路部门开始忙碌了起来…… Countdown to the Spring Festival Travel Rush 春运倒计时！      As the winter break approaches, many college students are heading back home. The stations and trains are filled with university students, whose friendliness adds warmth and joy to the journey. As a large number of college students take the train home for winter vacation, it makes everyone feel the atmosphere of Spring Festival travel in advance.     The Ministry of Transport① and seven other departments have issued a plan for regions across the country to ensure a smooth and safe Spring Festival travel rush. China is expected to see 9 billion passenger trips during the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush this year, setting a new record for the biggest annual human migration on Earth. The travel rush will begin on Jan 26 and end on March 5.     According to Li Yang, transport minister, over 1.8 billion of the trips are expected to be made by public transport. He said at a news conference on Tuesday in Beijing that the remaining 7.2 billion trips will be made by car, so the number of driving trips is expected to reach a historical high as well. A toll-free policy will be applied from Feb 9 to Feb 17 on the expressway network across China. He noted that there will be a great amount of traffic on the roads, including expressways, and national and provincial highways.     China’s railway network is expected to deal with 480 million trips during the period, an average of 12 million trips every day, up 18% compared to 2019, according to Huang Xin, director of the passenger service department of China State Railway Group, the national railway operator.     According to Liang Nan, director of the transportation department at the Civil Aviation Administration of China②, a record of over 80 million trips are expected to be made by air during the 40-day rush, which is a 9.8% increase compared to 2019. An average of 16, 500 flights are sc