TRAIN fares may not rise during the 40-day peak season around the 2008 Spring Festival, the Beijing News reported Saturday, citing the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) as saying.

The NDRC released a report on rising oil prices on its offical Web site Wednesday, which "might caused misunderstanding among readers," said Wen Bugao, a spokesperson for the top pricing authority. "The NDRC has not decided yet whether there will be a price hike for train tickets around the Chiese New Year."

The report, which has since been withdrawn from the Web site, said it would be hard to keep ticket prices unchanged during the upcoming peak travel season around the Spring Festival as continually rising oil prices were having a huge impact on China's public transportation operators.

But Wen argued that it was only an analytical report about the current difficulties public transportation operators face, which didn't mean ticket prices would go up accordingly.

On Nov. 1, the NDRC raised the prices of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel by 500 yuan (US$67) a ton because of rising global oil prices. Crude rose to US$93.04 a barrel Saturday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The NDRC in early 2002 set a 20 percent floating range on railway ticket prices during the peak season. But during this year's Spring Festival peak season, ticket prices remained unchanged.

China's railways transported more than 156 million people during the 2007 Spring Festival peak season, almost 4 million on average every day. In big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuchang and Chengdu, trains transport around 100,000 passengers every day during the holiday.

(Liu Minxia)