Special report: Qinghai-Tibet
Railway
LHASA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Qinghai-Tibet railway,
dubbed the railway on the "roof of the world", is proving to be stiff
competition for regional bus companies and it's encouraging a lot more people to
go home for the Spring Festival holidays.
Some 2,400 to 2,500 people were expected to board the
four passenger trains leaving Lhasa on Saturday for Beijing, Shanghai, southwest
China's Chongqing and Xining, capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province.
Ticket sales for the festival period have jumped 30
percent and seats on the trains are 80 percent sold.
"I haven't seen my parents for five or six years,"
said Xiang Yong who is from Deyang City in southwest China's Sichuan Province.
He moved to Lhasa more than 10 years ago and married a local woman named Lhaba
Zhoima in 1994.
Before the railway opened last July, Xiang would have
to spent 700 to 800 yuan for a bus ticket and take a grueling journey of four or
five days to get home.
"Now it takes only two days to travel from Tibet to
Sichuan by train," he smiled, adding that the price of a train ticket is about
half the cost of bus fare.
Xiang Dong's son, named Cewang in Tibetan and Xiang
Dong in mandarin, is two and a half years' old, and this will be his first visit
to his grandparents' home who will "be delighted to see him," said Xiang.
AS so many people are opting for train travel to and
from Lhasa, the regional bus business is starting to suffer.
According to the person in charge of the west suburb
long-distance bus station who declined to be named, the number of passengers
during the Spring Festival transport peak had dipped 70 percent this year. The
number of long-distance buses from Tibet to Xining and Chengdu have been cut
from 10 to just one or two.
Related: First peak travel day witnesses orderly
transportation
BEIJING, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- On the first day of
Spring Festival travel season from Feb. 3 to March 14 this year, transportation
across China is in good order.
China's railway transport authorities calculated that
3.3 million passengers traveled by train, with the service of 383 temporary
trains on Saturday, said Zhang Zhenli, an official with the Ministry of Railways
who is in charge of the seasonal transport.
As this winter vacation for college students comes
earlier than previous years, most of 9.6 million students have already returned
home, which greatly alleviated transport strains, according to figures from the
ministry.
Now that train ticket prices will not rise this year
as they usually did during the Spring Festival, many people have delayed their
travel plans, said Zhang.
For years China adopted the policy of raising ticket
prices during the Spring Festival travel season to help ease travel peaks.
During the Spring Festival travel season last year,
railway fares for ordinary hard seats increased 15 percent while those for other
seats went up 20 percent. Many passengers had to leave before the start of the
travel season to avoid price hikes.
"The queue only took me 20 minutes to buy train
tickets," said a lady surnamed Qing, who bought 23 tickets for some migrant
workers in Beijing ,who will return to Guangyuan in southwest Sichuan Province.
So far almost 60,000 migrant workers have booked rail
tickets in groups from Beijing's railway stations, much more than previous year.
The Ministry of Communications expects the increase
number of coach passengers to reach 115 million during the period.
Some 700,000 coaches, which can carry 280 million
people more than last year, will be on the road during the travel season, the
ministry said.
In the waiting hall of the Liuliqiao coach station in
Beijing, some chairs were unoccupied on Saturday.
"Passengers here are still one third more than the
previous days," said Su Jingfang, a cleaner working in the waiting hall.
Millions of Chinese, including migrant workers,
college students and others working far away from their hometowns, rush home for
a family reunion during Spring Festival each year, an important occasion for
Chinese homes.
For years, the nation's transportation system has
been strained in the festival season, as millions of migrant workers and other
Chinese flock back home and then return to the work place in just two or three
weeks.
