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hAvING not spent the Spring Festival with her family for two years, Li Li, 26, had been eager to go home in northeast China’s heilongjiang Province to spend the Spring Festival, which fell on January 23 this year, with her parents. But the greatest difficulty before her was how to get the train ticket to her hometown.
She runs a small barber’s shop with her husband in Beijing and they visited her husband’s home in east China’s Shandong Province for Spring Festival in the past two years.
“I even started to count down the remaining days of going home as early as November, nearly three months before the Spring Festival,” she told ChinAfrica. In previous years, Li and her husband had to line up for hours in front ticket windows, sometimes even for days, but still failed to purchase a ticket.“We had to resort to scalpers to get tickets,” she said.
That flawed system has changed in 2012 as a real-name ID-based train ticket booking system was launched nationwide at the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, more channels of buying tickets are also available.
No name, no ticket
Since January 2012, valid IDs have to be registered when people buy train tickets. Passengers are allowed to buy only one ticket with one ID card. Foreigners can use their passports as ID. Apart from the traditional method of buying tickets by standing in line, train tickets can also be booked through online booking systems and sales hotlines. Meanwhile, at the check in stage, passengers need to present their ID cards or passports in order to board their trains.
According to railway officials, the new rule is meant to crack down on rampant ticket scalping that typically booms during the holiday travel rush. Ticket scalping is widely believed to be the main reason why a large number of people could not purchase tickets, as the scalpers had bought most of the tickets and sold them at much higher price.
Convenient
Currently, with a huge population migrating during the holidays, the country’s railway transport capacity cannot meet its peak season traffic demand. The existence of scalpers hoarding train tickets worsens the problem of ticket shortage.
But this year, after the adoption of the real-name ticket booking system, Li Li and her husband tried the online booking system and the sales hotline at the same time and finally managed to book two tickets. “It(booking train tickets) is becoming more convenient as we have more channels,” said Li.
Zhang Lifang, a 27-year-old company employee in Beijing from north China’s Shanxi Province, also succeeded in booking a ticket through the online system. “Although it takes nearly two hours to reserve a ticket online due to too many people logging on the website at the same time, I finally got one and don’t have to go to the railway station,” she told ChinAfrica. With the order number sent by the railway department through a cell phone text message, she could get the ticket at a nearby booking office, avoiding having to stand in a long line as before.
Booking snags
To some extent, the new rule alleviates the difficulties in buying tickets during the travel peak season. “The online purchasing system brought by the real-name practice improves the transparency of limited train ticket resources, it is a big step forward,”Sun Zhang, an expert on transportation from Shanghai-based Tongji University, told Xinhua News Agency.
however, it hasn’t brought convenience to everyone. Migrant worker Li Jiangping from north China’s hebei Province said he didn’t try online booking or hotline booking.
“I don’t know how to surf on the Internet and have no access to computers. even if I went to an Internet café, it is still impossible to get a ticket booked as I don’t have an online bank account,”he told ChinAfrica.
Li Gang, 27, Li Jiangping’s fellow villager, tried the sales hotline, but failed. “I dialed the number from time to time after the tickets began to be sold. But the line was always busy,” he told ChinAfrica.
More troubles emerged when Li Jiangping tried to buy tickets at railway station as he had lost his ID card. he didn’t realize that a ticket could not be bought without the ID being produced until the booking-office clerk told him. “I have been in the line for more than an hour. It is in vain,” Li said. he had to go to the public security authorities to get a certificate to replace his lost ID card the next day, which meant a delay in his departure time.
Foreigners are another group who find the new practice inconvenient. For many who don’t understand Chinese, it is unlikely to book tickets online or via phone, because these two channels don’t provide services in english.
Information leakage
Many people like Zhang have expressed their concerns that the real-name booking system could leak private information as passengers’ names and part of ID numbers are printed on train tickets.
As before, Zhang discarded her ticket as soon as she got out of the station. When she realized that others might use her personal information printed on the ticket, it was too late and she could not find the discarded ticket.
Leaked private information could be peddled by agencies for commercial gains. “I know the pain of being annoyed by housing agents and insurance companies,” she said.
however, it doesn’t break any laws or regulations to pick up used tickets. “So passengers should have the awareness of pro- tecting personal information and not discard used tickets randomly,” he Xueyan, a researcher on policy-making from China Administration Society, suggested in an interview with Shanghai-based Dongfang Daily.
“It is good that the real-name ID-based ticket booking system is positive in cracking down on scalping. But people have to learn to protect their private information after the system was implemented nationwide,” he added.
Expanding transport capacity
According to experts, the real-name ticket booking system will not fundamentally solve the problem of ticket shortages during peak travel seasons. The root reason lies in the reality that China’s railway transportation capacity fails to meet its traffic demand.
Sources from the Ministry of Railways show that railway carried 235 million passengers during the 40-day Spring Festival rush season of 2012, 13.5 million more than last year. It means 5.88 million passengers have to be transported every day. however, only 3.82 million seats can be provided during the Spring Festival travel rush, leaving about 2 million passengers with standing tickets.
“Fundamentally the capacity of railway transport should be expanded to solve the train ticket shortage problem,” Li hongchang, a professor from Beijing Jiaotong University, said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency.
Meanwhile, the newly adopted real-name ticket booking system should be constantly optimized, like finding ways to improve the efficiency of buying tickets, simplifying the procedure of returning tickets and providing more services convenient to passengers, Li said.
She runs a small barber’s shop with her husband in Beijing and they visited her husband’s home in east China’s Shandong Province for Spring Festival in the past two years.
“I even started to count down the remaining days of going home as early as November, nearly three months before the Spring Festival,” she told ChinAfrica. In previous years, Li and her husband had to line up for hours in front ticket windows, sometimes even for days, but still failed to purchase a ticket.“We had to resort to scalpers to get tickets,” she said.
That flawed system has changed in 2012 as a real-name ID-based train ticket booking system was launched nationwide at the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, more channels of buying tickets are also available.
No name, no ticket
Since January 2012, valid IDs have to be registered when people buy train tickets. Passengers are allowed to buy only one ticket with one ID card. Foreigners can use their passports as ID. Apart from the traditional method of buying tickets by standing in line, train tickets can also be booked through online booking systems and sales hotlines. Meanwhile, at the check in stage, passengers need to present their ID cards or passports in order to board their trains.
According to railway officials, the new rule is meant to crack down on rampant ticket scalping that typically booms during the holiday travel rush. Ticket scalping is widely believed to be the main reason why a large number of people could not purchase tickets, as the scalpers had bought most of the tickets and sold them at much higher price.
Convenient
Currently, with a huge population migrating during the holidays, the country’s railway transport capacity cannot meet its peak season traffic demand. The existence of scalpers hoarding train tickets worsens the problem of ticket shortage.
But this year, after the adoption of the real-name ticket booking system, Li Li and her husband tried the online booking system and the sales hotline at the same time and finally managed to book two tickets. “It(booking train tickets) is becoming more convenient as we have more channels,” said Li.
Zhang Lifang, a 27-year-old company employee in Beijing from north China’s Shanxi Province, also succeeded in booking a ticket through the online system. “Although it takes nearly two hours to reserve a ticket online due to too many people logging on the website at the same time, I finally got one and don’t have to go to the railway station,” she told ChinAfrica. With the order number sent by the railway department through a cell phone text message, she could get the ticket at a nearby booking office, avoiding having to stand in a long line as before.
Booking snags
To some extent, the new rule alleviates the difficulties in buying tickets during the travel peak season. “The online purchasing system brought by the real-name practice improves the transparency of limited train ticket resources, it is a big step forward,”Sun Zhang, an expert on transportation from Shanghai-based Tongji University, told Xinhua News Agency.
however, it hasn’t brought convenience to everyone. Migrant worker Li Jiangping from north China’s hebei Province said he didn’t try online booking or hotline booking.
“I don’t know how to surf on the Internet and have no access to computers. even if I went to an Internet café, it is still impossible to get a ticket booked as I don’t have an online bank account,”he told ChinAfrica.
Li Gang, 27, Li Jiangping’s fellow villager, tried the sales hotline, but failed. “I dialed the number from time to time after the tickets began to be sold. But the line was always busy,” he told ChinAfrica.
More troubles emerged when Li Jiangping tried to buy tickets at railway station as he had lost his ID card. he didn’t realize that a ticket could not be bought without the ID being produced until the booking-office clerk told him. “I have been in the line for more than an hour. It is in vain,” Li said. he had to go to the public security authorities to get a certificate to replace his lost ID card the next day, which meant a delay in his departure time.
Foreigners are another group who find the new practice inconvenient. For many who don’t understand Chinese, it is unlikely to book tickets online or via phone, because these two channels don’t provide services in english.
Information leakage
Many people like Zhang have expressed their concerns that the real-name booking system could leak private information as passengers’ names and part of ID numbers are printed on train tickets.
As before, Zhang discarded her ticket as soon as she got out of the station. When she realized that others might use her personal information printed on the ticket, it was too late and she could not find the discarded ticket.
Leaked private information could be peddled by agencies for commercial gains. “I know the pain of being annoyed by housing agents and insurance companies,” she said.
however, it doesn’t break any laws or regulations to pick up used tickets. “So passengers should have the awareness of pro- tecting personal information and not discard used tickets randomly,” he Xueyan, a researcher on policy-making from China Administration Society, suggested in an interview with Shanghai-based Dongfang Daily.
“It is good that the real-name ID-based ticket booking system is positive in cracking down on scalping. But people have to learn to protect their private information after the system was implemented nationwide,” he added.
Expanding transport capacity
According to experts, the real-name ticket booking system will not fundamentally solve the problem of ticket shortages during peak travel seasons. The root reason lies in the reality that China’s railway transportation capacity fails to meet its traffic demand.
Sources from the Ministry of Railways show that railway carried 235 million passengers during the 40-day Spring Festival rush season of 2012, 13.5 million more than last year. It means 5.88 million passengers have to be transported every day. however, only 3.82 million seats can be provided during the Spring Festival travel rush, leaving about 2 million passengers with standing tickets.
“Fundamentally the capacity of railway transport should be expanded to solve the train ticket shortage problem,” Li hongchang, a professor from Beijing Jiaotong University, said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency.
Meanwhile, the newly adopted real-name ticket booking system should be constantly optimized, like finding ways to improve the efficiency of buying tickets, simplifying the procedure of returning tickets and providing more services convenient to passengers, Li said.