CRC releases chunyun ticket sale info

Over 413 million trips are expected to be made by rail during the upcoming 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, an 8.3 percent year-on-year increase, according to national railway authorities.

That's about 31.76 million trips more during chunyun, the Spring Festival rush, than last year and will amount to a daily average of 10.33 million trips, China Railway Corp said on Friday.

Train tickets for the first day of chunyun will go on sale on Sunday, it said on its WeChat account.

The 40-day chunyun period begins on Jan 21 and lasts through March 1.

Tickets can be purchased online or by phone 30 days in advance of travel, or at railway stations, ticket agencies and self-ticketing machines 28 days in advance.

This year's seven-day Spring Festival holiday runs from Feb 4 to 10. Lunar New Year's Eve is the first day. The travel rush is expected to peak at the holiday's first and last days.

With hundreds of millions of Chinese returning to their hometowns or traveling around the country, huge pressure is placed on the rail system. In all, 3,285 high-speed trains will be put into operation during the period, 299 more than in the previous chunyun.

To boost people's chance of getting tickets during travel rush, China Railway Corp said it is offering a new function this year on 12306.cn, the official online train ticket booking system.

It will automatically allocate canceled tickets to other buyers who prepaid when tickets were sold out. That service is limited to a number of busy train lines.

It is expected to save passengers the trouble of having to repeatedly refresh the webpage to learn about canceled tickets - a practice that generally leads only to frustration because ticket-snatching plug-ins are faster.

To ensure convenience and easy access to mainland Spring Festival visits for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao residents, all ticket vending and collecting machines in the high-speed rail stations in all provincial capitals nationwide and throughout Guangdong province will accept the Home Return Permit and Mainland Travel Permit, the company said.