China's railway transport capacity around the upcoming Spring Festival is to hit a record high, about 25 percent above the normal rate. However, it will still be unable to remedy ticket shortages during the holiday travel rush according to railway officials.
Hu Yadong, deputy minister of the Ministry of Railways (MOR), said the recording-breaking overall transport capacity before the upcoming Spring Festival travel season (Chunyun), which begins on January 8, 2012, will reach approximately 4.8 million daily, a 25 percent increase from the ordinary standard.
Xia Xueluan, a sociology professor at Peking University, told the Global Times on Tuesday the increase in transport capacity could help lift travel woes to some extent. However, it cannot still solve the problem as the current capacity will not be able to accommodate the demand.
Xia said passenger flow will increase as a combined result of the overlapping rush of migrant workers, students, and millions of others racing home to be with their families for the Chinese Lunar New Year, which is earlier than usual as it falls on January 23, 2012.
China's railways will carry about 235 million passengers during the upcoming 40-day Spring Festival season, up 6.1 percent from the same period last year, according to data from the MOR.
The statistics also show that a total of 5.88 million people will travel by train each day during next year's travel rush. But the scheduled daily rail transport capacity is only 4.8 million, which means that over 1 million passengers will not be able to secure a ticket home every day during the holiday season if no temporary trains are available.
Railways Minister Sheng Guangzu said at a recent meeting on Chunyun that they have resorted to a number of measures designed to cope with the upcoming ticket shortage issue, such as the recently commenced operation of an online booking system for all trains, utilizing a phone booking service provided by all 18 local railway bureaus, and increasing the number of ticket booths as well as extending the amount of time in which the train tickets are sold.
However, Xu Dan, a 27-year-old Liaoning resident who works in Beijing, told the Global Times that ticket buyers cannot be guaranteed a ticket home even if it is booked online in advance.
She said the Beijing Railway Station sells tickets online and at the ticket booths at exactly the same time.
"I would rather queue for the ticket myself at the station because the railway website could very likely crash as a result of too many people trying to buy tickets online at the same time," Xu said.
Chi Xiuming, who also works in Beijing and needs to travel home during the Spring Festival, said that she can never get through to the telephone booking service because there are always a large number of people calling the same number during the travel season.
Despite the unbalanced travel capacity, the unreasonable ticket distribution system also plays a major role in why holiday travelers are often desperate to obtain a ticket home, according to Xia.
"The railway stations should not reserve any tickets, even for their employees or any high-ranking officials," Xia said. "As long as there are reserved tickets, there will always be ticket scalpers."
Xu said that for the past three consecutive years during the Spring Festival she has had to pay an extra 100 yuan ($15.77) to ticket scalpers just to get home, while the ticket itself would normally cost about 200 yuan ($31.54).
