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China's train strain

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-01-24 20:34

However, the trains' capacity is not the only issue that has raised concern. The discontent of the public turned into indignation after a video featuring Beijing Railway Station was broadcasted online.

This image taken from a 3-minute online video posted January 12 shows a female conductor at Beijing Railway Station's ticket office printing out and storing up scors of tickets while eager passengers waited outside to no avail. Public outrage irrupted instantly online, questioning the railway system's ability to handle the Spring Festival travel rush. [tianya.cn]

The images showed an employee behind a closed ticket office counter printing a large number of tickets and organizing them in different stacks while ignoring a long queue of desperate travelers.

Related coverage: SpringFestival 2009
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"That's probably why I couldn't get a ticket even though I was one of the first in line," spats Cheng. "She was probably saving those tickets for the scalpers."

The government has received increasing complaints about the ticket system and especially the alleged collaboration between ticket sellers and scalpers.

The Ministry of Railway has released a message from President Hu Jintao on Thursday. "This year's Spring Festival is facing a tougher supply-demand imbalance. The ministry has to brainstorm for measures to improve passenger convenience and make them all public", said the President.

He also ordered the ministry to ensure a "smooth and safe" transportation during the peak travel season.

China plans to expand its rail system from the current 79,000 km to 110,000 kilometers by 2012. With this measure, the ministry hopes to meet Lunar New Year.

But Cheng Bingchuan couldn't wait until then and he was willing to pay a little extra to get his ticket sooner, so he went to an agent at a hotel. The agent charged a 30-yuan for one ticket, six times more expensive than the regular 5-yuan ticket sold by booking offices.

As the holiday approached, the agency admitted that it could not guarantee a ticket, so Cheng decided to resort to the notorious scalpers.

He searched online for contacts, but they seemed to play hard to get. "I called several scalpers and they were very impatient. They told me to call on the day when I wanted to leave, not so far in advance."

But Cheng suspected that was the scalper's way of making sure he could ask increasingly anxious travelers to pay higher prices in the last minute.

Just when he was getting desperate, a friend gave him another scalper's phone number. His friend had bought a ticket home for 200 yuan (nearly US$30) more than the legal ticket price.

"He told me he could get tickets from some director at the railway station." Cheng paid 300 yuan more for his ticket, almost two times the original price. Cheng, an engineer in a technology company is glad that his salary of about 8,000 yuan a month can cover the scalper's exorbitant fee. But others might not be so lucky.

According to an online survey conducted by China Central Television (CCTV), 47.3 percent of the 28,545 respondents buy train tickets through connections, 37 percent through scalpers and only 15.4 percent succeed in obtaining a ticket at a booking office.

Most scalpers hoard train tickets by queuing repeatedly or making bookings at different authorized ticket offices across a city, explained the official from the ministry's Public Security Bureau Zhang Qinghe.

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