Glitch in ticket system sparks fury

BEIJING — A computerized ticketing system in China that was created to help millions of migrant workers buy train tickets home for the Chinese New Year holiday crashed within minutes of its launch, angering thousands of Chinese on Thursday.

The tickets went on sale through the Internet last week, but the system handling the online bookings crashed due to overwhelming demand, according to the railways ministry.

Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is the biggest of two “Golden Week” holidays, giving migrant workers their only chance of the year to return to their home provinces with gifts for their families.

More than 200 million people are expected to take to the railways over this year’s holiday, the biggest movement of humanity in the world.

Many Chinese complained on Thursday that, with Chinese New Year just two weeks away, the government was still unprepared to ease the annual crush.

The chaos marked the latest setback for the beleaguered railways ministry, which bore the brunt of public fury over the poor handling of a deadly high-speed train crash last July that killed 40 people.

“The number of people visiting the website has increased more than 10 times and the peak period will last a long time,” state news agency Xinhua quoted an unidentified representative from the railways ministry as saying.

The ministry pledged to “increase the network bandwidth” and refund passengers for tickets that have not been issued.

— Reuters