Scalpers game train ticket system

Scalpers have found new ways to bypass the real-name ticket booking system during this year's Spring Festival travel rush, while many are still struggling to get a train ticket home for the holiday, the Beijing News reported Sunday.

According to the report, passengers have to go through five checks to get on the train, but ID cards are checked against ticket information only at the entrances of train stations. This gives scalpers the opportunity to sell tickets whose information does not tally with identification documents and will not be discovered during railway authorities' checks.

The report does not specify in which stations this loophole is exploited, but Ma Jianfu, an official from Beijing Railway Station, told the Global Times that the problem did exist. "The ID cards and tickets are only required to be shown simultaneously at the entrances of our station, while other checks might selectively ask passengers to show both of them."

The report came shortly after a news report saying a passenger, who was previously told by a railway station's ticket office that tickets for the train he wanted had all been sold out, but later found that the train had only five passengers on board, Xinhua reported on Saturday.

Beijing South Station, where bullet trains and high-speed trains are clustered, later replied on its official Sina Weibo account that the incident was the result of a staffer operating the ticket inquiry system incorrectly.

Professor Li Hongchang from Beijing Jiaotong University said such loopholes in management are common among other industries, but when it involves railway tickets, it becomes a "dagger in the heart" for those still struggling to go home during the world's largest annual migration, which started Saturday and will last for 40 days this year.

As 3.4 billion passengers are expected to travel around China during the peak time, to ease the pressure, China's Air Force confirmed on Sunday it would open 122 temporary air routes to the civil aviation, adding the number of aircraft bringing 20,000 daily, the China Central Television reported.

However, professor Li noted that railways still account for about 40 percent of passenger capacity during the travel rush, a huge market pressure that cannot be relieved with the fast development of high-speed railway in just a few years.

"The primary cause for the difficulty in making purchases lies in the ticket distribution by railway authorities, as we can see that they never put all the tickets into the system but reserve some of them for certain groups, such as travel agencies or scalpers."

"Management loopholes can be dealt with by putting more human and material resources or by advancing technology supervision," said Li, "But if the ticket selling system cannot be fully open and transparent, it will always be difficult for the public to buy them."