The Chinese public is blaming scalpers for its travel misery as record numbers of passengers take to the rails to struggle home in time for the Spring Festival.

People line up before ticket office. Some stay overnight to get a ticket home.

The country's railways will see another peak in passenger numbers tomorrow, after a record 5.12 million squeezed onto trains on Saturday, according to the Ministry of Railways.

In an online survey at the portal Website Sina.com yesterday, 64.8 percent of the nearly 80,000 people polled blamed ticket shortages on scalping, while 77 percent voted for a real-name registration system on ticket sales.

Chinese are restricted from buying a large number of tickets for busy rail routes. The limit varies from three to five tickets at each purchase.

Most scalpers hoard train tickets by lining up repeatedly or using different authorized ticket offices across a city, said Zhang Qinghe, an official with the railway ministry's public security bureau.

Rail police have seized 4,069 scalpers and 88,562 train tickets in a clampdown since December, the ministry said in a separate press release on its Website yesterday.

Zhang Shuguang, an official with the ministry's transportation bureau, dismissed the real-name registration practice as merely adding troubles as the huge passenger flow would make identity checks at train stations too time-consuming.

There will be more home-bound travelers and migrant workers as the Chinese Lunar New Year, which dawns on Monday, draws near, the ministry said in a statement.

In the first eight days of the 40-day festival rush period starting from January 11, China's railways carried a daily average of 4.76 million people, 16.3 percent more than a year earlier.

Around 700 temporary trains were being put to use yesterday and today to meet the transport demand, more than in previous years.

Rail authorities have suspended some cargo shipping and short-distance transport to guarantee enough trains for the millions making long journeys for once-a-year family reunions in the hectic holiday.

Vice Railway Minister Wang Zhiguo attributed the ticket shortage to the limited capacity of railway transport. China's railways can provide a daily average of 3 million seats on normal days but have to find nearly 5 million in busy times, Wang said.

Traveling on rail is the best choice for many Chinese, college students and migrant workers in particular, as it is cheaper than air flights and allows for more comfortable long-distance trips than buses.

The ministry estimated it would serve 188 million passengers in the 40-day festival rush period, up 8 percent from a year earlier.

(Xinhua News Agency January 20, 2009)