The queues for temporary IDs are growing as passengers are now required to produce identity cards when purchasing train tickets.
Within 30 minutes on Tuesday afternoon, more than 200 people joined the line for temporary ID cards in the Beijing Railway Station, according to a calculation by a China Daily reporter.
The queues are expected to grow starting Jan 8, the beginning of the peak time for ticket booking for the coming Lunar New Year.
The Beijing Railway Station is reminding people to bring their ID cards when buying tickets. After Jan 8, all passengers must bring their ID cards and tickets together to be allowed into the waiting halls before boarding.
More than 970 temporary ID cards were made in the capital city's stations on Sunday, about 10 times the daily average during the week before the real-name ticketing system was introduced, Beijing Times reported on Monday.
A worker in the station surnamed Cui told China Daily that people who forget their ID cards can apply for a temporary ID, but they cannot apply for temporary cards for others.
That news disappointed Liu Meng, 36, a Shanxi native who works in Beijing with his wife.
"My wife won't be back to Beijing before mid-January, and without her ID card, I can't buy a ticket for her," Liu sighed. He even took his booklet showing the family's residence to prove his relationship with his wife, but the effort ended in vain.
As a ticket booking website and hotline have been opened, tickets buyers like Liu can book tickets online (www.12306.cn) or call 95105105 to buy tickets.
Yet with the peak season for ticket booking approaching, the huge Web traffic has paralyzed the new online system from time to time.
A China Daily reporter logged onto the booking website on Tuesday morning but the site responded "system busy, please log in later".
China's railways are expected to carry 235 million passengers during the coming Spring Festival travel season, a year-on-year increase of 6 percent, which means an average of nearly 5.9 million people will travel by rail every day.
However, the average daily capacity of the country's railway system is about 3.8 million.
"This year, the railway departments are facing greater pressure, because the early Spring Festival means students, migrant workers and others are going home at almost the same time," Yang Hao, an expert on railway operation at Beijing Jiaotong University, told China Daily.
