With the Spring Festival approaching, the problem of difficulty in purchasing train tickets is becoming more and more prominent. China Railway said that this year's Spring Festival transportation is the first normalized Spring Festival transportation after the smooth transition of the epidemic, and there is a strong demand for passengers to buy tickets for travel. It is expected that the railway will send passengers 4800 million passengers, with a daily average of 12 million passengers, an increase of 37% compared with the Spring Festival in 20239%。
On the other hand, train tickets** are limited, and many people can't grab tickets when the contradiction between supply and demand is prominent. However, many netizens reported that tickets are "seconds" on the official online sales platform of the railway, 12306, but they can be bought on some third-party platforms. After a number of ** inquiries, it was also found that some tickets on 12306 showed that they were "sold out", and on some third-party platforms, they showed "tickets". The practice of these third-party platforms is essentially to use the 12306 ticketing rules to allow passengers to get tickets through "buying long times by short" and "buying short times by long", and charge a lot of handling fees from them. According to the railway department, the 12306 platform has never cooperated with any third-party platform organization, nor has it allocated tickets to any third-party platform for sale, nor has it made data links with any third-party platform. This statement seems to be no problem, but the reality is that although both individuals and third-party platforms operate on the same ticket-buying exit, third-party platforms have more powerful servers and more advanced technology than individuals, while ordinary users are limited by network speed, coupled with manual hand speed is not as fast as the high-speed software of third-party platforms to grab ticketsIndividuals can't grab third-party platforms through 12306, and they are often killed by powerful servers. In addition, third-party platforms use the rules of 12306 more than most ordinary people, and their operation methods do not violate the rules, but for the masses who do not use third-party platforms, it increases their distress to buy ticketsIt is equivalent to artificially erecting a "digital barrier" and profiting from it, and there is obviously a fairness problem with this "technology scalper" approach. In order to prevent all kinds of malicious ticket grabbing, the railway department has also launched many measures, such as before the start of the Spring Festival, the railway department said that 12306 has been strengthened in advance, network bandwidth expansion and upgrade, and malicious "ticket grabbing" software has been intercepted. But from a practical point of view, there are still many third-party software that can successfully "grab tickets". The Spring Festival ticket is a livelihood product that is in short supply, and its resource allocation should reflect more social equity. For third-party platforms, they need to assume more social responsibilities and not be a "technical scalper", which makes it difficult to buy tickets. As far as 12306 is concerned, since it provides an "exit" for ticket purchase, it cannot evolve into a "gap" and let "technical scalpers" prevail. In this regard, the railway department should strengthen technology research and development, upgrade the system, further optimize the ticketing system, improve the convenience and fairness of ticket purchase, severely crack down on malicious ticket grabbing, and ensure the travel rights and interests of the majority of passengers.
*: Half Moon Talk.
Author: Half Moon Talk Commentator Ma Xiaocheng.