Do you feel like it's getting harder to buy high-speed rail tickets? 12306 website customer service responds with train number | Changzhou | customer service

Train tickets are sold out instantly,

Why are multiple train trips only waiting for supplementary tickets?

Recently, some citizens have reported that,

The high-speed train from Jinan to Changzhou

There are over 30 trains every day, and before that, you could almost buy and go anytime,

I can't buy tickets even a week in advance now,

Almost all are in a standby state.

Similar roast emerge in endlessly on the Internet,

"12306 is all waiting for replacement tickets" once made it to the hot search.

Is it really harder to buy high-speed rail tickets?

Why is this happening?

As soon as the train ticket for "12306" is available for sale, it will be sold out instantly

The China Railway 12306 website usually presales tickets 15 days in advance, and passengers can purchase tickets for the 15th day at 14:00 every day.

On August 9th, a journalist attempted to purchase tickets from Jinan to other regions on August 23rd on the China Railway 12306 website.

Taking "Jinan Changzhou" as an example, the reporter kept refreshing the ticket purchase page two minutes in advance. At exactly 14:00, when the page was refreshed, it was found that out of the 42 train trips, only 16 were available for booking tickets; The remaining 26 trains show no remaining tickets and require standby, accounting for a high proportion of 62%.

Among the available train tickets, only 11 are left with sufficient remaining tickets.

At 14:00 on August 9th, the 12306 website displayed the remaining tickets for some trains from Jinan to Changzhou on August 23rd

At 15:00, one hour later, there were only 9 trains left with sufficient remaining tickets.

In the next 14 days, this section of the road will only have the middle 4 days, and there are still more than ten train trips with sufficient remaining tickets. On other days, the number of trains with sufficient remaining tickets is in single digits, and more than 20 trains have no tickets at all.

The remaining tickets of trains from Jinan to Changzhou from August 10th to August 22nd

The above situation is not an isolated case. At 14:00, the moment when tickets were first booked, there were already a large number of train trips with no or very few remaining tickets:

There are a total of 67 trains from Jinan to Shanghai, with 11 showing no remaining tickets and 13 showing insufficient remaining tickets.

There are 132 trains from Jinan to Beijing, with 62 showing no remaining tickets and 26 showing insufficient tickets.

At 14:00 on August 9th, the 12306 website shows the remaining tickets for some trains from Jinan to Beijing on August 23rd

There are a total of 122 trains from Jinan to Tianjin, of which 68 have no remaining tickets. The remaining tickets for 22 trains are still sufficient. In the next 7 days, there will only be enough remaining tickets for 30-40 train trips.

At 14:00 on August 9th, the 12306 website displayed the remaining tickets for some trains from Jinan to Tianjin on August 23rd

There are a total of 169 trains from Jinan to Qingdao, of which 31 show no remaining tickets, while 20 show fewer remaining tickets, with only 138 showing that tickets can be reserved.

Is it easy to buy long-distance train tickets?

Train tickets from Beijing to Shanghai can be booked starting at 12:30 on the day 14 days in advance.

So, at 12:30 on August 9th, the reporter refreshed the ticket purchase page and attempted to purchase tickets for the train from Beijing to Shanghai on August 23rd, only to find that the vast majority of the remaining tickets were sufficient.

The remaining ticket situation of trains from Beijing to Shanghai and connecting to Economic South and Changzhou

Generally speaking, there are fewer long-distance trains.

Among the 42 trains from Jinan to Changzhou, there are 37 trains from Jinan to Shanghai and 22 trains from Beijing to Shanghai.

At 14:00 on August 9th, the reporter found that among the 22 lying down trains on the "Beijing Shanghai" section:

From Jinan to Changzhou, there are 4 remaining second-class seats and sufficient tickets;

From Jinan to Shanghai, there are still 13 train trips with sufficient second-class seats available;

From Beijing to Shanghai, the vast majority of trains have sufficient tickets available, with only a few having fewer business seats available.

At first glance, it seems that the farther the distance, the more trains with sufficient remaining tickets.

12306 website: Prioritize meeting the ticketing needs of long-distance passengers

The reporter respectively addressed the issue of most trains from Jinan to Changzhou and Tianjin being sold out as soon as tickets were sold out. They called the customer service of China Railway 12306 website for inquiries and received similar answers:

The customer service representative stated that trains that do not have tickets as soon as they start selling usually pass through Jinan to Changzhou or Tianjin.

"Jinan belongs to the intermediate stop station of trains, and the reserved number of tickets for intermediate stops is very small. There are not many reserved tickets for a station, such as 3, 6, 9, etc. The vast majority of tickets are at the starting station, so it is necessary to ensure that its long-distance passengers have enough tickets to purchase. Trains departing from Jinan still have tickets."

This also explains why for the same train, "Jinan Changzhou" shows no tickets, while "Jinan Shanghai" shows sufficient remaining tickets.

For the issue of not being able to grab tickets even after refreshing the ticket page in advance at 14 o'clock, the customer service representative said, "Factors such as internet speed and operation speed may affect the final ticket purchase result."

"It's not realistic for railways to keep all their tickets, not give them to passengers, and let empty trains run." The customer service representative explained to reporters.

For "why is there a ticket for the whole journey and no ticket for the midway station?" Zeng Fawen, the official WeChat official account of 12306, explained:

Due to the high demand for transportation during holidays, there is a temporary shortage of transportation capacity. In this case, the railway department will prioritize meeting the long-distance passenger demand from the starting station to the destination station by increasing the ticket quota for long-distance trains, in order to maximize the utilization of transportation resources.

Of course, it will also take into account the needs of short distance passengers. When there are sufficient long-distance tickets, the ticket allocation will be dynamically adjusted according to changes in demand, and part of the ticket will be automatically transferred to various stations along the way in different time periods to meet the needs of short distance passengers.

So, why can't long-distance direct trains be open for sale of tickets at all stations along the way?

12306 The official WeChat official account explained that if short distance tickets are sold openly, they will directly occupy the ticket amount of long-distance passengers. Long distance passengers with rigid demand and small choice will have fewer opportunities to buy tickets.

At the same time, the random segmented sale of long-distance train tickets will inevitably result in some section seats being idle and transportation capacity not being fully utilized.

In 2019, the China Railway 12306 website launched a "standby ticket purchase" function, with an average redemption rate of around 70%.

Do you think it's harder to buy high-speed rail tickets than before?