Scalpers exploit Chinese Spring Festival rush

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-01-20 13:20

BEIJING  -- The Chinese public blamed scalpers for  travel misery as record numbers of travelers took to the rails to struggle home in time for the imminent Spring Festival.

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The country's railways will see another peak in passenger numbers on Wednesday, after a record 5.12 million squeezed on to trains on Saturday, said the Ministry of Railways (MOR) here Monday.

The public has seen rampant scalping as the biggest cause for the strain.

In an online survey at the portal website Sina.com on Monday, 64.8 percent of nearly 80,000 polled blamed ticket shortages on scalping, while 77 percent voted for a real-name registration system on ticket sales.

Chinese are restricted from buying a large number of tickets for busy rail routes. The limit varies from three to five tickets at each purchase.

Most scalpers hoarded train tickets by queuing repeatedly or making books from different authorized ticket offices across a city, said Zhang Qinghe, an official with the MOR's public security bureau.

Rail police have seized 4,069 scalpers and 88,562 train tickets in a clampdown since December, the MOR said in a separate press release on its website on Monday.

Zhang Shuguang, an official with the MOR's transportation bureau, dismissed the real-name registration practice as merely adding troubles as the huge passenger flow would make identity checks at train stations too time-consuming.

There will be more home-bound travelers and migrant workers as the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on January 26, draws near, the MOR said in a statement.

In the first eight days of the 40-day festival rush period starting from January 11, China's railways carried a daily average of 4.76 million people, 16.3 percent more than the level a year earlier, the MOR said.

A daily 700 temporary trains will be put to use on Monday and Tuesday to meet the transport demand, more than the numbers in previous years, according to the statement.

Rail authorities have suspended some cargo shipping and short-distance transport to guarantee enough trains for millions making long journeys for once-in-a-year family reunions in the hectic holiday.

It has become a routine experience, sometimes in vain, for ordinary Chinese to queue for hours to get a train ticket for a trip home during the festival rush.

Vice Railway Minister Wang Zhiguo attributed the ticket shortage to the limited capacity of railway transport.

China's railways can provide a daily average of 3 million seats on normal days but have to find nearly 5 million in busy times, said Wang.

Traveling on rail is the best choice for many Chinese, college students and migrant workers in particular, as it is cheaper than air flights and allows for more comfortable long-distance trips than buses.

Data show the mileage of railways only added 50 percent in the past decades, while that of roads tripled and that of civil air routes surged 14.7 times.

The MOR estimated it would serve 188 million passengers in the 40-day festival rush period, up 8 percent from a year earlier.