Top Biz News
Tickets with names could slash scalping
By Xin Dingding and Wang Yan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-21 09:14
 |
Large Medium Small |
However, a majority of the public does not agree.
An online survey of some 5,000 netizens by China Youth Daily last week showed over 85 percent believe the name-based train ticket system could help curb scalpers.
Only 10 percent didn't think the new system would affect the scalpers' prosperous businesses.
Yan Weijie, a migrant worker from Anyang, Henan province, said: "Selling name-based tickets sounds like a good idea to me. I think there will be fewer scalpers soon."
But Meng Xiangxing, a student at Beijing Foreign Studies University from Jinan, capital of Shandong province, said he was worried that scalpers might have new ways to sneak around the rules.
"It looks to me that the scalpers have a pretty mature industrial structure. You know, they have the insiders and everything," he said.
He believed the main reason for the difficulty in getting tickets is transportation capacity.
"If there were enough tickets for everybody in the first place, why would there be scalpers at all?" he said.
China is expected to have 26,000 km of new rail lines put into operation between now and 2012, bringing the total length to 110,000 km.
But the ticket shortage across the country won't be solved until 2020 when trunk lines link all the regions, she said.
A north-south high-speed trunk line between Beijing and Guangzhou is expected to be completed by 2012.
Spokesman Wang said when the high-speed Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong railway is completed, travel time from Beijing to Hong Kong will be cut from the current 24 hours to eight hours. Travel time from Shanghai to Hong Kong will also be cut from 18 hours to only six hours.
