Tavel rush tests high-speed line

"My homebound journey is going to be a pleasant one this year," said Wu Shu, a Beijing office worker who secured a ticket via the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed line to travel home for the upcoming Spring Festival.

"It will take me only four hours to reunite with my family, compared with at least eight hours on other trains," said Wu, whose parents live in Nanjing, capital city of eastern Jiangsu province.

"The ticket is more expensive, but it's still worth it given the line's speed and comfort," Wu said. It cost him 455 yuan ($72) - one or two hundred yuan more than tickets for the slower trains.

For similar reasons, many people like Wu have chosen to ride home on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed trains this year, putting the operator of the line, which opened only half a year ago, under great stress.

The 1,318-kilometer-long high-speed line runs through Tianjin municipality and Hebei, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. It is expected to partially ease the festival transport rush in the country's eastern regions.

A total of 235 million trips will be made via the country's railways during the festival travel rush this year, up 6.1 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Railways (MOR).

Beijing Railway Station has forecast that the year's festival transport will peak between January 18 and 21, with the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou as well as the province of Zhejiang expected to see the largest passenger flow.

To cope with the increased travel demand, a daily average of 184 trains are running during the 40-day Spring Festival travel period that started on January 8, said the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway Corp., the operator of the high-speed railway.

The line will likely transport more than 180,000 travellers each day.

"The line can basically cope with the current travel demand. We have added more trains as tickets for trains running along the line will sell out on holidays such as the National Day holiday," said Ren Hongquan, deputy chief of Tianjin West Railway Station.

Passengers numbers have suddenly increased lately, but waiting halls have not been as crowded as in the past, said Li Hui, a security checker at the Beijing South Railway Station, the line's starting station for southbound trips.

"Because travellers can book tickets via phone and the Internet, only a few come to the station to buy tickets during this year's travel rush," said Cai Yanmei, director with the station's public relation office.

To ease the ordeal of buying tickets, the country started selling railway tickets online or via phone by the end of last year and introduced an ID-based ticket purchasing system in some of its busiest stations ahead of the year's festival travel rush period.

But the line's operation also has been challenged by the weather which has lead to power failures of high-speed trains.

Several trains were delayed along the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed line Saturday afternoon as a result of a power shutdown caused by rain and foggy weather, according to the Ministry of Railways.

"Delays within a certain range or caused by irresistible forces such as natural disasters are understandable. Safety should be the priority," Wu said, hoping that the railway authority could learn from past experiences to gradually improve its services.

Hu Yadong, vice minister of railways, said the railway departments have prepared 500 units of diesel locomotives to prevent possible power outages and will maintain safety checks.

Spring Festival, or "Chunjie" in Chinese, is the country's most important festival. It falls on January 23 this year.