The Spring Festival peak travel season kicked off in China on Sunday, with tens of millions of passengers, mainly migrant workers and college students, on the move in the world's largest seasonal migration.

At the railway station in Xining, capital of western Qinghai Province, migrant worker Luo Lirong raised her head now and then to look at the boarding notification board.

"After a whole year of hard work away from home, I can finally go back home to see my child," Luo said over an hour ahead of her boarding time. "I cannot pretend that I am not in a hurry."

The Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, falls on Jan. 23 this year. It is the most important traditional Chinese festival for family reunions.

A total of 3.16 billion passenger trips are expected during the 40-day travel rush, known as "chunyun" (Spring transportation) in Chinese, up 9.1 percent from a year earlier, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.

China's railways alone will carry 235 million passengers during the period, the Ministry of Railways said Friday.

To cope with the busiest traffic of the year, railway authorities, bus companies and airlines across the country are increasing transport capacity.

Railway authorities have long been under pressure to increase capacity and improve ticketing services, as many citizens find it extremely hard to secure a single ticket during major holidays.

The Ministry of Railways began allowing customers to book all tickets online or by phone late last year in order to ease the ordeal of buying tickets. During major holidays in the past, people would wait for hours in long lines before getting to the ticket sales windows, only to find that tickets were sold out.

However, the new booking services are not as effective as expected. Many have complained that the ticket booking website often crashes under heavy traffic and the phone service cannot be easily reached, urging the ministry to improve the booking services.

The new booking services also drew criticism from rural migrant workers and senior citizens in cities, as many of them cannot use the Internet and don't have the online banking services needed to pay for the train tickets.

A majority of rural migrants take trains back home, as train services are much cheaper than other transport services. The homecoming is treasured as many go home once a year, while some only return once every several years.