Expat backs big shake-up of system for buying tickets

Before high-speed railways began to spread in China, Bob Covey, an expat working in Shanghai with his Chinese wife, often had a convoluted and prolonged journey back to his wife's hometown, Shaoxing in neighboring Zhejiang province.

They would return for a family reunion every year during Spring Festival. The trip, a two-hour car ride, could turn into an epic journey lasting eight or nine hours.

"Sometimes we intended to take the train but could only get tickets from Shanghai to Hangzhou and then had to take a long-distance bus from Hangzhou to home. We often got caught in traffic and the bus journey took us seven hours. It would have been only an hour by train," said Covey, a 51-year-old media consultant from the United States who relocated to Shanghai in 2010.