A new railway schedule, aiming at better accommodating the needs of passengers, takes effect on Wednesday April 1, 2009. [Photo: cnsphoto]

A new railway schedule, aimed at better accommodating the needs of passengers, will take effect on Wednesday April 1, Xinhua News reports.

Zhang Shuguang, the director of the transport department, under the ministry of railways, says the adjusted schedule will solve the problem of bottlenecks in some regions.

"After adjustment of the schedule, we will increase the capacity of the railway system. In some bottlenecked regions, we have implemented huge resources to meet passengers' growing demands during peak travel times. I think the transportation pressure will be greatly eased with this new schedule."

According to the adjusted schedule, two express direct passenger lines with a speed of 250 kilometres per hour will be put into use. A total of 70 bullet trains will operate on the two lines.

Under the new schedule, travelling between central China's Wuhan city and Shanghai will take just less than five hours. Travel time from Taiyuan to Beijing by train will be cut by five and a half hours. High-speed trains will reach 18 provincial-level regions in eastern and central China and some of the country's western regions as well.

This is another large-scale railway adjustment to improve the speed and direct transport ability following the sixth adjustment on April 18, 2007.

To passengers' delight, the ministry of railways will not raise ticket prices. But Zhang Shuguang says the ministry has no intention of introducing a system to sell train tickets which requires identification.

"With regard to a system which requires identification, the ministry of railway has done research on it for three to four years now. The difficulty of buying a ticket during peak travel time is not caused by how the tickets are sold. Thus, I think we should focus on railway construction and further increase the transportation capacity as soon as possible. That's the fundamental measure needed to solve the problem."

During each Spring Festival in recent years, ticket scalpers have bought loads of tickets and then resold them at a higher price. Some citizens claim that this situation might have caused difficulties in getting a train ticket. In response, they suggest registering tickets under a new system might be useful in settling the problem.

In addition, for passengers' convenience, Zhang Shuguang says the railway authority has begun considering allowing tickets to be booked via the telephone or the internet.

(CRI April 1, 2009)