The reporter learned from the National Railway Group that the current railway 12306 system has successfully passed the peak of ticket sales before the Spring Festival, and on February 2, tickets for February 16 (the seventh day of the first lunar month) have been sold, ushering in the peak of ticket sales for the return journey after the holiday. The reporter interviewed Yang Lipeng, the technical director of the Railway 12306 Science and Technology Innovation Center, on issues related to the purchase of train tickets for the Spring Festival transportation that the public is concerned about.
Why is there still a reflection that "train tickets are difficult to buy, and some trains are on sale in seconds"?
Yang Lipeng introduced that this year's Spring Festival transportation is the first normalized Spring Festival transportation after the smooth transition of epidemic prevention and control, and passengers have a strong willingness to travel. Judging from the situation in the first nine days of the Spring Festival, the railway, as a popular means of transportation, is the first choice for passengers, and the average daily number of passengers has reached 118340,000 people.
During the Spring Festival travel period, the railway department will put all passenger cars into operation, providing up to 10.7 million passenger ticket seats per day (excluding reuse on the way), and the total capacity arrangement will be the largest in history. Despite this, tickets are still in short supply. During the peak period of the Spring Festival, the railway passenger flow has the characteristics of extreme concentration, extreme imbalance, and one-way flow, and it is impossible for any means of transportation to prepare the capacity according to the highest passenger flow, otherwise it will cause a great waste of the usual capacity resources.
According to the analysis of pre-holiday ticketing and waitlist, all the capacity of the railway has been put into use, but it is still unable to meet the large-scale ticket purchase demand of passengers in just a few days, and the contradiction between supply and demand is extremely prominent.
It is precisely because of the tight supply of tickets during the period that some institutional platforms take the opportunity to increase prices for profit by special means such as **, ticket grabbing, and ticket hoarding, which further exacerbates the contradiction between supply and demand. Objectively speaking, rail capacity and train tickets** are limited, and peak periods cannot fully meet demand.
Since the Spring Festival tickets went on sale on January 12, the railway 12306 system has accumulated 3 **train tickets9.8 billion, including 2 train tickets during the Spring Festival5.8 billion. The 12306 Internet ticketing system has withstood the pressure of ultra-large-scale concurrent access, successfully passed the peak of pre-holiday ticketing, and the system runs smoothly and stably. 12306 registered users successfully log in 3584 per day20,000 people, with a single day's highest successful login of 448980,000 person-times; The average daily page views are 622100 million times, with a single-day maximum of 875600 million times.
"'Ticket grabbing software' can be used to grab tickets in a centralized manner? ”
Yang Lipeng said, "The online 'ticket grabbing software' can grab tickets through centralized ticket grabbing, and then do not pay for the refund of the ticket or refund the ticket after payment, and then let the returned ticket meet the waitlist demand submitted by itself." In fact, the probability of using this means to grab a ticket is extremely low. Because the "ticket-grabbing software" submits the waitlist demand and eventually needs to enter the 12306 waitlist queue, and the waitlist of the 12306 system is cashed out in the chronological order of order generation, the ticket-grabbing software cannot adjust the waitlist demand that is ranked behind it to the forefront, and the 12306 system can identify the abnormal waitlist demand orders through a variety of ways and dispose of them, and will not give priority to the ticket amount to meet the abnormal waitlist demand.
Some platform institutions regard the contradiction between the supply and demand of train tickets for the Spring Festival transportation as a "business opportunity" to make money, and use special means such as "ticket grabbing software" to carry out the business of "grabbing tickets for profit", seriously disrupting the order of ticket purchase, bringing risks to the protection of passengers' personal information and the security of the railway 12306 system, and some have also seriously damaged the vital interests of passengers.
To this end, the railway department has adopted a series of containment measures, established an online verification mechanism between passenger identity information and the national issuing authority, and effectively standardized the registration and ticket purchase services of the 12306 platform, so that false identity information cannot be registered and purchased tickets. Strengthen the real-time monitoring and identification of behaviors such as ticket grabbing, ticket hoarding, etc., and take measures such as directly rejecting requests or putting their needs at the end of the queue for abnormal behaviors. Since the sale of Spring Festival tickets, 64% of the total number of ticket purchase requests and 39% of the total number of standby ticket purchase requests have been identified and handled. The 12306 ticketing system was upgraded in advance, the bandwidth was expanded, and the ability to cope with high ticketing volume and technical prevention was further improved, ensuring the smooth operation of the company.
In addition, in order to make more profits, some "ticket-grabbing software" also create fast, light-speed, VIP and other "acceleration package" concepts with various tricks and different costs, engage in false propaganda, and make passengers mistakenly believe that purchasing the "acceleration package" service can improve the success rate of ticket grabbing. According to the analysis of 12306 background data, regardless of whether the "acceleration package" is purchased or not, the success time of ticket purchase is the same.
Is the "ticket-grabbing software" reliable?
Yang Lipeng introduced that some "ticket-grabbing software" set up a large number of 12306 words in their relevant pages and function introductions, so that passengers mistakenly believe that they have cooperation with the railway 12306 platform, and the actual situation is that the 12306 platform has never cooperated with any third-party platform institutions, nor has the ticket amount been allocated to any third-party platform for sale, nor has it been linked to any third-party platform.
The remaining ticket data displayed on the platform page of the "Ticket Grabbing Software" platform is crawled from the information displayed on the page of the 12306 platform, and then modified and processed. When the tickets for a certain train are sold out, the 12306 platform will display that there is no ticket for the train, but when it is displayed on the "ticket grabbing software" platform, it will be changed to "with a ticket", which is essentially for passengers to "buy a long time by a short time" and "buy a short time by a long time".
Ticket-grabbing software "induces passengers to set up multiple combinations of arrivals and stations, and adopts the method of "buying a long time and a short time" by spending more money and buying tickets for several stations in front of the actual arrival station, as well as the "buying a short and a long time" method of buying a short-distance ticket to get on the train first and not getting off the train in violation of regulations. Set up additional small text prompts under "have a ticket", such as "buy a few more stops" or "you don't need to get off the bus and make up the ticket for the whole journey", etc., this kind of "ticket" does not really have a ticket from the departure station to the arrival station. "Buy a long ride by short" let passengers pay more, "buy a short ride by long", get on the train to make up the ticket may trigger the train overcrowding alarm, affect the safety of train operation, the railway department will be in accordance with the regulations to ask the "buy short and long" personnel to get off the train, passengers travel will be greatly affected.
In addition, the "ticket-grabbing software" also recommends unreasonable transfer schemes, so that its platform displays that there are tickets, and some transfer times are particularly short, and it is very easy for passengers to "miss the ride" when traveling, but the "ticket-grabbing software" does not consider these, and only considers the fees that can be earned by successfully purchasing tickets.
What are the basic principles of rail ticket allocation?
According to reports, the basic principle of railway ticket allocation is to consider the convenience of passengers along the line to buy tickets and make full use of railway capacity resources, taking into account the long and short distances. The allocation is mainly based on the historical passenger flow and ticket pre-sale at the departure station and each station along the way, giving priority to long-distance passengers who take the train from the departure station to the final station, and when there are long-distance tickets left, the ticketing system will adjust part of the ticket amount to the stations that are in demand along the way.
At present, in the national railway operation map, the proportion of short-distance passenger trains under the management of the railway bureau has reached 65%, and short-distance passengers can choose more space. The main reason for the phenomenon of "a large number of empty seats" on the existing trains found on the Internet is that these trains are either return trains with one-way passenger flow, or some seats reserved to take care of passengers at intermediate stations, or some trains with longer operating lines have some sections of passenger flow that are not full.
The railway department reminds that it is recommended to make full use of the new functions of the railway 12306, such as the subscription of the starting sales reminder, the pre-filling of ticket purchase requirements, the waitlist for ticket purchase, and the service of the ticket purchase area for migrant workers and students, so as to improve the success rate of ticket purchase. When you can't buy the direct ticket you want, you can try to buy a connecting ticket on the 12306 platform and travel in sections. The railway authorities have launched transfer services at 120 major stations, allowing passengers to transfer without leaving the station.
Due to the limited railway capacity and total ticket amount, it is impossible to meet the demand of passengers during peak hours, so it is recommended that passengers choose to travel off-peak or choose other modes of transportation during the peak period of the line.
*: CNR).