Railway officials give up setting a deadline to end ticketing nightmare for Lunar New Year passengers

Railway authorities have backtracked - again - on promises of hassle-free journeys for hundreds of millions of passengers during this year's Lunar New Year holiday by admitting they have no quick fix to the ticketing woes of previous years.

Some people will have trouble securing a train ticket home, they admitted, as the 40-day travel rush begins tomorrow. The world's busiest railway system is expected to handle a record 258 million journeys - an increase of almost 8 per cent from last year - during the largest annual human migration on earth.

The travel period, called chunyun, or "spring transport", in Putonghua, will run until February 24.

The announcement by the railway authorities came during a press briefing led by Lian Weiliang , vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission.

"The current transport capacity hardly satisfies needs at peak passenger flow," Lian said. "Although transport infrastructure has developed quickly in recent years, passenger flow also increases every year. In some places people will have difficulty getting tickets home."

The mainland's train-ticketing system has long been a subject of pain and frustration during the Lunar New Year, when tickets are snapped up as soon as they go on sale. A much-maligned online booking system has been criticised for only exacerbating travellers' pain.