Shanghai's coach stations have been adding services on routes where there is a shortage of rail tickets.

Tickets for hundreds of extra services are available at the Shanghai General Long-Distance Bus Station, station director Zhang Yongbin said on Sunday.

"We hope to make efforts to relieve pressure on the tight rail transport and ensure more passengers are able to return home before the Chinese New Year's Eve."

Over the past week, the coach station has been closely monitoring the rail tickets situation and were adding bus trips and tickets on necessary routes accordingly.

"For example, 79 bus trips to Wuhan have been added to the schedule since the peak began,'' Zhang said.

Trips to Chengdu in Sichuan Province, Huaiyang in Henan Province and Shangrao in Jiangxi Province, among others, have also been increased.

Train tickets to these cities had been selling quickly over the past week, Zhang said.

Most of the home-heading migrant workers in Shanghai prefer traveling by train and only resort to long-distance buses after it proved impossible to get a train ticket, transport officials said.

But the coach service was a great help during the travel rush as it had more flexibility to add extra trips and increase capacity. Bigger crowds are expected at ticketing booths at both railway and bus terminals this weekend with the Chinese New Year's Eve is only one week away.

24-hour ticketing

"There are much longer queues of ticket buyers at our bus station compared to a week ago,'' Zhang said yesterday.

The Shanghai South Long-Distance Bus Station, another major coach terminal in the city, said they would extend ticketing operations to 24 hours from today as a temporary measure.

The general coach station introduced around-the-clock ticket sales in August last year.

More than 2 million travelers will leave Shanghai during the travel rush by bus and 80 percent of them will buy tickets and leave from these two coach hubs next to the city's north and south railway stations. About 6.9 million others are leaving by train during the same period, city transport officials said.

Tu Haiming, a member of Shanghai Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said transport operators should integrate the selling of railway and bus tickets.

"Now those who fail to get train tickets after a tiresome wait in line have to go to the coach station to repeat the process to look for a bus ticket,'' he said.

Zhang Yongbin, the coach terminal director, said a shared ticketing platform was "technically too demanding" at present.

(Shanghai Daily January 19, 2009)