BEIJING - China's official website for booking train tickets has become one of the world's most frequently-visited websites, as China has started its massive travel period around the traditional Spring Festival.

According to data from Alexa.com, an international web information provider, the traffic of China's ticket-booking website 12306.cn was ranked 115th on Monday and 148th during the past week, compared with 1,059th during the past three months.

The Ministry of Railways (MOR) said Tuesday that the website got more than 1.4 billion clicks on Monday alone, and 5.25 million trips were made via the country's railways, up 5.7 percent from a year earlier.

The Spring Festival, or Chinese lunar new year, which falls on January 23this year, is the most important Chinese holiday for family reunions. The Spring Festival holiday is thus always a hectic time for China's public transportation system.

A total of 3.16 billion passenger trips are expected during the holiday, up 9.1 percent from a year earlier, of which 235 million trips will be made via the country's railways, up 6.1 percent year-on-year, said Hu Yadong, vice minister of railways.

This year's transport rush in the Spring Festival Season started on Sunday and will end on February 16, according to the Ministry of Railways.