Why railway doesn’t sell discounted standing tickets

The approach of the Spring Festival travel rush reignites a public debate on the price of standing ticket on the train.

For years, the train's standing ticket and seat ticket are sold at same price in China. Some criticisms say that the passengers without seats on the train actually don't enjoy the same services offered to those who bought the seat tickets.

A recent online survey on Sina Weibo shows that more than 90 percent of the 930,000 respondents support the proposal that standing ticket price should be cut 50 percent.

Selling standing tickets is a compromise adopted to cope with the sharp disparity between supply and demand in railway service, according to railway authorities.

"If we stopped selling standing tickets, a number of people would not be able to return home during the travel rush," said a railway official on Wednesday.

In fact, even standing ticket is difficult to get during the peak of the holiday travel rush because it means the last hope to go back home for some people. "We won't sell standing ticket unless the buyer is willing to buy it," said the official.

"I don't agree with half price for standing train ticket," said Wang Mengshu, academician from Chinese Academy of Engineering during an interview with People's Daily Online on Wednesday.

Wang has worked for railway engineering for more than 40 years, and is the expert on tunnel and underground engineering in China.

In response to the question raised by some netizens: "Why train can sell the tickets without seats while bus or airplane cannot?" Wang said that's mainly because the rail demand exceeds the supply due to the large population. After the increase of the density of train departure, the standing tickets won't exist anymore.

"In fact, railway didn't intend to sell standing tickets at the beginning, because it will lead to chaos in management, low efficiency and decline in the quality of operations," Wang said.

"When we discussed about the problem earlier, the Ministry of Railways had already explained that the discount on standing tickets would make trains overloaded, causing danger. "

From the perspective of transport safety, the railway authorities set limits on the number of standing tickets.

For rail capacity shortages, Wang said, "Efforts are being made to link various provinces and cities with high-speed rail. Road transport should be developed to reduce the railway's pressure where there's no or less railway."