Shanghai railways gear up for Spring Festival mass exodus

Ticket price hike won't affect migrant workers and students; budget airline explores market

By Miao Qing and Pan Haixia

The city's railway administration has been getting ready for what it anticipates will be a historically high passenger flow during the Chinese Spring Festival.

This year's transportation peak season lasts 40 days, from January 14 to February 22, the Shanghai Railway Administration (SRA) announced in a press conference yesterday. In this period, most Chinese students will leave universities for their winter vacation and people will return to their hometowns for the Spring Festival (Chinese Lunar New Year), which falls on January 29.

The SRA estimated its passenger volume for the coming peak season will reach about 24.8 million arrivals and departures, up 6.7 per cent from last year. The number includes all the passengers who will be handled by the Shanghai Railway Station and stations in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, all of which come under SRA administration.

Liu Lianqing, director of the SRA, said they are ready to handle a daily flow of 600,000 passengers during the 40-day transportation peak season. He said the peak amount would probably reach as many as 720,000 in one day.

Days around January 25 and February 14 will become two peak periods for transportation when a huge number of people will first return to their hometowns and later come back to Shanghai, Liu said.

Shanghai Railway Station, the largest railway hub in East China, is expected to handle 5.5 million passengers during the traffic surge, with a peak daily flow of 170,000 people.

Most of the travelling population are migrant workers and college students. Officials estimated that migrant workers will account for more than 40 per cent of the passenger load prior to the Spring Festival, most of whom will go to Anhui, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Shandong and Jiangxi provinces.

Getting train tickets is a top priority and often a big problem for most people who plan to go home, especially those whose hometowns are quite distant from Shanghai.

According to Wu Xingfan, stationmaster of Shanghai Railway Station, an additional 307 ticket sales windows have been opened. A stadium located in the city's Putuo District has been converted into a temporary ticket office with its 36 windows open from 8 am to 5 pm.

Yesterday was the first day of train tickets sales for the holiday travel period. Passengers can buy their tickets 10 days ahead of their departure time.

Hai Xiuli, a migrant worker from Henan Province, was the first person to buy her tickets home at the Putuo Stadium after it opened at noon yesterday.

Hai said it would be her first trip back since leaving her hometown three years ago.

"I know it is quite difficult to buy tickets before the Spring Festival. I did not expect that I would be able to get them so easily," she said.

The Putuo Stadium did not attract as many ticket buyers as expected, and a total of 557 tickets were sold there yesterday.

Wu Guoping, an official in charge, said the ticket-selling hours will be extended during the peak traffic period and they have prepared different plans for difficult situations.

"On snowy or rainy days, we will provide shelter for ticket buyers waiting outside and allow them to stay overnight in the stadium," he said.

Last year, people who waited outside to purchase tickets were exposed to sudden snow and were eventually invited inside.

About 30 policemen have been assigned to keep order in the stadium.

Some people, mostly migrant workers, were waiting at the ticket office of the railway station Wednesday night to buy tickets the next day, said a policeman surnamed He.
The instant information boards in the ticket office showed that most of the tickets with departure dates on January 12, 13 and 14 were sold out yesterday.

Most ticket prices will rise by 15-20 per cent in the holiday season, except for tickets for students and migrant workers who take the added hard-seat passenger trains, said the authority.

The railway station has accepted group bookings from enterprises which employ most migrant workers.

They also revealed that they would probably dispatch several passenger trains exclusively carrying migrant workers during the peak traffic days.

The railway administration announced that they have assigned an additional 283 passenger trains to handle the passenger surge during the 40-day period. Some cargo trains will also be re-assigned for the passenger traffic.

"It is estimated that the Shanghai Railway Station will receive an average of one train every 3.4 minutes during the transportation peak," said Liu.

"It is obvious that the railway handling capacity still falls behind the actual passenger volume, especially during the heavy traffic season," he said. "And we are also not sure whether most of the trains will be able to arrive on time."

Flights will be less crowded than trains, given their high prices during the Spring Festival.
Sources with the Junli Flight Ticket Agency said an obvious price hike will begin January 20, when flights from Shanghai to major cities like Beijing, Dalian and Xi'an will most probably stop offering discounts.

While the Spring Festival has enabled airlines to raise prices, it has also brought the newcomer, low-budget Spring Airlines, a chance to further explore its passenger market.
The airline has declared on its website its intention to make 6,000 low-fare round trip tickets available during the Spring Festival. The tickets mainly target the city's 3.7 million "New Shanghainese" -- those who have settled in Shanghai but have hometowns somewhere else.

All 6,000 tickets are priced at around 30 per cent of their original price, making some of them even cheaper than train tickets.