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CHINA> National
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Prodded by Hu, railways rush to do more
By Zuo Likun (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-01-15 21:21 China's railway authorities, prodded by President Hu Jintao and millions of travelers who aspire to go home for the impending 7-day Spring Festival holidays, pledged Thursday they would do more. Video: China rumbles as millions join holiday rush for home
Responding to the instructions, top ministry officials convened a mid-night meeting to mete out a raft of measures to ease transportation congestion, provide more tickets to the needy, while end the loopholes which feed on a booming scalper business. Vice Minister of Railways Wang Zhiguo told reporters on Thursday in Beijing that the ministry will suspend cargo services to allow more passenger trains in the busiest southern and eastern regions. Short-distance passenger trains would be suspended for more long-distance trains. Hard sleepers would be changed to seats.
The ministry will also transfer passenger trains serving northeast and northwest areas to south and east China and improve schedules of temporary trains, especially those for students and migrant workers. Tickets will be sold only in the railway ticket sales network, except for group tickets for students and migrant workers. Hotels, restaurants and travel agencies are ordered to halt ticket booking services. In addition, major stations will adopt 24-hour ticket services. As a new rule decreed by the ministry on Thursday, sales staff will be prohibited from buying tickets for others, from carrying cash and mobile phones during work hours, from keeping personal belongings on the sales desk. Wang also apologized to passengers who had reacted angrily to a video posted online, which showed a sales lady at Beijing Railway Station's ticket office printing out 130 tickets of trains running to cities in the northeast, while eager passengers waited for hours in long lines in frigid cold, but to no avail. Passengers had accused the station of scalping tickets. "On behalf of the ministry, I have to apologize to passengers for their unpleasant feelings and misunderstandings the incident has caused," Wang said. "The action was immediately investigated and turned out it was part of advance preparations to save time for passengers. There was no rumored collusion between railway staff and ticket scalpers." The 3-minute video clip was posted on the internet on Monday, sparking an uproar among Chinese internet surfers,stoking the long-harbored discontent over scalpers as many failed to get tickets home. Wang reiterated his ministry's determination to deal harshly with any malpractice in ticket sales. More than 30,000 police officers have been mobilized in a nationwide campaign against scalpers, detaining over 2000 scalpers, and confiscating nearly 80,000 tickets which was resold to travelers later. Huge traffic volume during the Spring Festival has long plagued China's railway system, as the demand far exceeded the supply. In the world's largest annual human migration, 188 million passengers are expected to take rail for home during this year's Spring Festival holiday. The tension got more public attention when a man in his 60s died suddenly after waiting for hours in long lines to buy train tickets last Wednesday in a East China city. The scarcity of homebound tickets during the Spring Festival travel rush would be significantly eased by 2012 when freight trains travel on different rails from passenger trains, and when over 800 more railway stations will be built or restored, Wang told reporters. |
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