According to the Ministry of Railways, the online train ticket booking system will be adopted for all of the G/D/C-led bullet trains by the end of September, following trial runs of online ticket booking services on Beijing-Tianjin and Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railways.
The tickets for railways linking Zhengzhou and Xi’an, and Wuhan and Guangzhou, are scheduled to go on sale online starting Sept. 15. After a week, six more railways will be on the list of online ticket booking system, where people are able to book train tickets by a click of the mouse.
According to the Ministry of Railways, travelers can log onto www.12306.cn, the website for the China railway customer service center, to buy tickets.
And, it is easy to make an online purchase: First, travelers need to download and install a security certificate from the home page of the website and make a registration. Second, choose train tickets and enter their real-name information. Third, pay the tickets by online payment tools available.
Those who buy train tickets online using ID card can board the train directly just by swiping their cards; while those who use other valid documentations, before being allowed to depart, they will have to go to a ticket window at the train station, railway ticketing outlets or ticket vending machines to pick up their tickets.
At the initial stage of online ticket booking, only parts of stations are equipped with barrier machines that can read data stored on ID cards. For this reason, the railways authorities suggest that those travelers who obtain their tickets online should arrive at the station earlier,and enable themselves adequate time to pick up their tickets.
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