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1,500 task forces rush to aid Guangzhou travel peak

By Zuo Likun (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-02-04 14:50

A task force of 1,500 special police officers has been dispatched to help maintain the smooth flow of travelers at the southern Guangzhou Railway Station ahead of the Spring Festival, a local newspaper reported Thursday.

The Chinese Ministry of Railway's special team has also been joined by another local force of 9,900 on guard around the clock at the mega populous city of 13.86 million people, where a measure of named tickets for train-travelers was put on trial this year in a tentative bid to tackle chronic travel chaos, the Guangzhou Daily reported.

The city's mammoth corps of 6.2 million migrant workers travel annually to and fro middle and western hinterlands for the traditional festival of families getting-together. Its railway agency has for long been a lightening rod for criticism, much the same throughout the country, over perennial ticket shortages, ineradicable scalpers and chaotic platform management.

Station directors of neighboring Dongguan city were sacked last week after a news photo showed two railway officers helping passengers scramble on board through windows.

In Jan. 2009, an old man died while queuing overnight for a ticket at an east China railway station. In another morbid tragedy in early 2008, a junior student was jostled off an over-crowded platform and killed by a train pulling in at eastern Wuhu station.

The embattled railway ministry predicted the fundamental problem of railway capacity and market demand would be solved by 2020. Besides Guangzhou, a second city where the real-name ticket measure is on trial this year is Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan province, a hub for the exodus of migrant workers.