Chinese passengers can buy train tickets online for special services starting from today, a prelude for the upcoming Spring Festival travel rush-the largest annual migration on Earth.

Tickets will be available 25 days before they want to travel, 5 days earlier than last year. The move is expected to avoid long queues in train stations, and allow people to plan their journeys further in advance. Tickets for regular trains will be available online and phone booking 20 days before travel day, starting 28th December.

The Spring Festival travel rush will officially begin on January 16th, 2014, ahead of Chinese New Year at the end of the month, when the largest annual migration on Earth begins. Billions of passenger journeys will be made then. About 510-thousand journeys will be made in Beijing each day, an increase of 6-percent compared with last year.