Dubious excuse offered for annual travel woes (2)

By the end of 2012, the high-speed rail system in China was the longest in the world, with over 9,356 kilometers of track, Sheng Guangzu, the head of the MOR, was quoted as saying recently.

Meanwhile, according to estimates made by rail authorities, the country's high-speed rail capacity is five times as efficient as regular-speed rails; meaning, presumably, that the addition of a kilometer of high-speed track is equivalent to adding 5 kilometers of common, non-high-speed track.

Bearing this premise in mind, if we multiply the length of high-speed track by five, we can see that the equivalent of 46,780 kilometers of regular-speed track has been added to the domestic rail system over the past five years. Adding this length to the 57,424 kilometers of regular-speed track the country had by the end of last year, we get the equivalent of 104,204 kilometers of regular track capacity altogether, up 1,235.98 percent from the 7,800 kilometers China had during the height of the Spring Festival travel season in 2008.

With these simple calculations showing expansion of the country's rail network outpacing demand by nearly 100-fold, it seems like capacity issues are hardly adequate justifications for the challenges local train travelers face every Chinese New Year.