XIAMEN -- Over 180,000 passenger trips are expected to be made aboard ferries shuttling between the mainland coastal city Xiamen in Fujian province and Kinmen in Taiwan during the Spring Festival travel rush, which kicked off on Tuesday.

As Spring Festival draws near, the Spring Festival travel rush, or chunyun, the world's largest annual human migration, started on Tuesday and will last for 40 days till Feb 22.

During this travel period, the Xiamen-Kinmen route is expected to operate 948 ferry services.

The number of ferry services on the Xiamen-Kinmen route will increase from 20 to 24 each day starting Tuesday, with a ferry service available almost every half an hour, according to Shen Wenjuan, a border inspection official in Xiamen.

Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Year, is celebrated on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

To facilitate exchanges between people across the Strait, the mainland has increased the number of regular ferry services between Fujian and Taiwan.