As nearly 160,000 passengers left Shanghai's railway stations yesterday, the first day of the annual 40-day Spring Festival transport peak, police and managers vowed to clamp down on ticketing crimes by both insiders and scalpers.

As of yesterday, police had cracked 25 ticketing crimes, detaining 27 touts. They confiscated 109 train tickets valued at 18,942 yuan (US$2,769). The tickets will be returned to stations to be sold.

Migrant workers and students returning home to celebrate the Chinese New Year mostly travel by rail because train services reach most parts of the country and are cheaper than going by air.

The traditional Spring Festival railway ticket anguish in Shanghai is made worse by ticket touts.

Shanghai railway police yesterday issued details of the largest ticket-touting case so far this year after they arrested a man named Yi Pan and his girlfriend.

Yi, from Ziyang in Sichuan Province, and his girlfriend, who wasn't named, were caught on Xizang Road N. on Saturday morning.

The pair sold 33 train tickets from Shanghai to Chengdu to a buyer for 14,200 yuan, almost double their face value.

Tickets to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, are among those in most heavy demand, according to railway officials.

Police swooped after receiving calls to their hotline reporting that ticket touts were working in the area.

Yi confessed he paid others to line up many times to buy the tickets, police said.

Zhu Kaiping, deputy director of Shanghai Railway Station, said he could not rule out the possibility that there were insiders working at stations and ticketing agents who were involved in ticket touting.

He called on passengers to report any such behavior to the hotlines 021-6317-9532 and 021-5123-4408.

The Ministry of Railways warned on Saturday that railway staff found to be involved in scalping would be dismissed and face criminal charges.

Local railway operators said that passenger flow in Shanghai was steady yesterday and did not sharply increase.

"Most passengers are leaving for Sichuan, Guizhou and Hubei provinces and Chongqing City," said Dong Bilian, an official at Shanghai Railway Station.

About 2.96 million passengers will leave Shanghai by rail in the next two weeks, before Chinese New Year's Eve on January 25, a rise of 11 percent over last year.

The number of departures is expected to climb to a peak on January 22 or 23, when more than 220,000 people on a single day are expected to board trains to leave Shanghai.

Shanghai Railway Station yesterday opened two temporary camps, covering 600 square meters, on its south square to house waiting passengers. A 300-square-meter information screen was also put into service to post train information outdoors.

Nearly 6.92 million passengers will leave Shanghai by train during the 40-day travel rush.

More than 3.23 million people will leave by long-distance buses and 2.79 million by air.

(Shanghai Daily January 12, 2009)