Fu Weigang/Wen

Recently, the public opinion storm caused by two girls buying an extra ticket and stacking snacks, and refusing to lend seats to passengers without seats, has pushed the China Railway Customer Service Center (12306) to the forefront. The official customer service responded by stating that "the ticket is compliant and valid, and the right to dispose of seats belongs to the purchaser, who should respect their own wishes", attempting to characterize this public dispute as a "commodity buyout" logic.

In this controversy, many netizens who support girls occupying seats, like the 12306 official, have fallen into the same cognitive blind spot: mistakenly equating "passenger transportation contracts" with "general commodity sales", and assuming the logic of "money can buy out specific public spaces".

The seats on trains have been designed from the moment they were born to transport 'people', not to provide a high priced physical storage for snacks and miscellaneous items.

To clarify the power boundaries and governance loopholes behind this dispute, we must turn our attention to the long history of railway development, existing legal frameworks, the economic logic of train tickets, and international practices.

Historical Seats

The tradition of "one person, one seat, one seat" on trains did not naturally come with the invention of steam locomotives. It is the result of human exploration and technological iteration in public space governance.

The earliest design of train carriages directly continued the construction of traditional European postal carriages. In 19th century England, old-fashioned buses were composed of individual compartments (Compartments). Each compartment is equipped with a row of benches on the opposite side, which strictly limits the physical structure of a space to accommodate only a fixed number of passengers (usually 6 to 8 people). At this moment, the seat is physically closely attached to the person, and it is the smallest unit for calculating transportation capacity.

Subsequently, driven by the westward movement, the United States broke through the partition restrictions of Europe in order to reduce construction costs and maximize capacity, and designed a "universal carriage" with a aisle in the middle and parallel benches on both sides, which was the prototype of modern conventional trains. Due to the elimination of physical partitions on the benches, in the early stages of disorderly development, the carriage often fell into a chaotic state of "a few seats can fit in".

In the history of China's railway development, purchasing train tickets did not necessarily mean having an exclusive seat for a long time. During the Republic of China era, although railway passenger cars were divided into first class, second class, and third class carriages, regardless of the class, the seat number was not printed on the ticket surface. All passengers boarding rely entirely on the original principle of 'first come, first served'. During peak travel periods, passengers even need to climb in through the car windows to occupy their seats, and physical conflicts caused by seat grabbing in the carriage are not uncommon. In order to solve this chaos, the Ministry of Transport of the Beiyang Government issued rules in 1922, requiring that "tickets be sold according to the number of seats on this train", attempting to control the total number of "one person, one seat".

What truly made 'matching roles' a system and promoted it was the modernization of railways after the founding of the People's Republic of China. By manually stamping or handwritten seat numbers on cardboard tickets, the railway department has established for the first time a one-to-one correspondence between "tickets, seats, and natural persons" in the system. However, in the era of hard ticket sales from the 1940s to the 1990s, due to the use of manual grid cabinets for ticket sales, data could not be synchronized in real time. During peak passenger flow periods such as the Spring Festival travel rush, the railway system had to sell a large number of "no seat tickets" (station tickets) in order to send more people home. At this point, the comfort of one person per seat had to give way to the urgent demand for transportation capacity.

It was not until the launch of the soft paper ticket system and the railway computer networking ticketing system in 1997, and even the widespread adoption of the 12306 system today, that the precise control of seat data across the country was achieved in milliseconds. The upgrade of technological means is to ensure that each sold "seat ticket" is unique and valid, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that every passenger who buys a seat ticket can travel with dignity and dignity.

From the development history of train seating, it can be seen that since its inception, train seats have not been a physical "cargo" for handover and purchase, but a dynamic service facility centered on the dignified movement of people.

From the physical limitations of early European compartments, the restructuring of the order of fully accessible carriages in the United States, to the total control of manual counting in the era of hard tickets, and now the millisecond level data scheduling of the 12306 system, humans have spent more than 200 years promoting technological iteration. Its fundamental purpose has never been to calculate the "sold property rights" of a certain physical asset, but to continuously optimize the service experience of "delivering people safely and with dignity to their destination" in limited public spaces.

Reducing train seats to the subject matter of commodity trading is not only a misinterpretation of modern transportation service contracts, but also an ignorance of the century long history of public governance evolution behind them.

Seats in the Law

The cognitive bias exhibited by the public in this incident is completely understandable. In daily life, 99% of the consumption scenarios for ordinary people are the buying and selling of general goods (i.e. property rights transfer): I bought two fast food, eating one and throwing the other is my freedom; I bought two mobile phones, one for making calls and the other for table footrests, which have nothing to do with others.

The public instinctively applies this property rights logic to trains, believing that 'since they have paid, seats are private goods, and putting snacks is also my freedom'. So let's take a look now, how is this legally defined?

The essence of a train ticket is the proof of the "passenger transport contract" established between the passenger holding the ticket and the railway transportation enterprise. Article 814 of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China stipulates: "A passenger transport contract is established when the carrier issues a ticket to the passenger, except as otherwise agreed by the parties or in accordance with customary practices

In this contractual relationship, the legal subject matter of the contract is not the chair made of metal and sponge on the train, but the transportation service behavior of the railway company to safely and timely transport specific passengers from point A to point B. Seating is simply an ancillary service facility provided by railway companies to meet the basic comfort level of passengers during the performance of this transportation service. Passengers who purchase train tickets obtain a "claim (debt)" to the railway company for transportation services, but do not purchase temporary "ownership" of specific physical spaces inside the carriage.

In this "snack occupancy" incident, the two girls were able to buy three hard seat tickets due to two possible technical operations: one was to use the regional data gap in the real name ticketing system and borrow the identity card of a friend or family member who was unable to attend to purchase tickets; The second is to utilize the blind spot of cross document type plagiarism check, where individuals use their own "resident ID card" and "passport/pass" to legally purchase multiple tickets on the same train.

However, neither of the above methods can legitimize the occupation of seats in terms of law and the performance of passenger transport contracts. If it is "borrowing someone else's documents", according to the law, the transportation service contract cannot be transferred. Article 9 of the Railway Passenger Transport Regulations of the Ministry of Transport clearly stipulates the implementation of real name ticket management. The real name system endows train tickets with extremely strong personal attachment. When the third party registered on the ticket fails to board the train through the gate on time, the specific passenger transport contract is actually unable to continue to be performed due to the unilateral breach of the right holder. The corresponding seat accompanying the right of use is suspended at the moment the train departs - if the party can catch the train at the next station, the seat is probably still theirs. However, these two girls are not rights holders and they have no authority to decide the ownership of this position.

Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the parties involved may use the "one person, multiple documents" method to purchase multiple tickets. For example, some people may use their ID cards to purchase tickets, as well as other documents such as passports. But this approach also violates the rule of 'one person, one seat'.

The passenger transport contract is based on the physical displacement of a specific natural person. According to basic physics and the common sense that the human body is inseparable, it is impossible for a natural person's body to split and fit into two completely different physical hard seats at the same time. This means that when the passenger occupies one of the seats, the ticket purchased with another document is physically destined to be unfulfilled. For the ticket that cannot be fulfilled, at the moment the train departs, the passenger has already committed a unilateral breach of contract and cannot use their "ID card body" to exercise the "passport ticket rights" on their behalf, in order to enclose their snacks.

Since the first right holder has failed to perform (or is unable to perform) due to breach of contract, where has the right to use the seat gone?

From the perspective of ownership path, transportation resources instantly flow back into the hands of railway transport enterprises (carriers). The railway company has the right to resell the seat as a "surplus ticket" at intermediate stations through the system (commonly known as an extra ticket at intermediate stations). But during the vacuum period when the railway company had not yet conducted secondary ticket sales, in this specific enclosed public space of the carriage, the seat physically degraded into an "idle transport resource".

At this time, passengers holding empty tickets (station tickets) in the carriage also have the legal status of "passengers" who have established a legal passenger transport contract with the railway company. According to the legislative spirit of Article 810 of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China on the mandatory contractual obligations and social welfare attributes of public transport carriers, public transport should be guided by the principle of "maximizing transport capacity and prioritizing public interests".

Passengers holding standing tickets paid the full fare equivalent to hard seat passengers, and they are by no means violators of fare evasion. When facing physical exhaustion and the presence of unclaimed idle resources in the carriage, passengers without seats temporarily sit down and rest according to the customary law of "first come, first served" in order to meet their "reasonable transportation requirements", which fully complies with the principle of good faith and trustworthiness in contract performance as stipulated in Article 509 of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China. Due to the absence of any other legal and prior right holders present on site, passengers without seats are allowed to sit down on their own.

The seat in economic logic

The two girls' seat occupancy behavior and 12306's indulgent response completely destroyed the price gradient and product logic carefully constructed by railway passenger transport itself.

Any mature public transportation system mostly meets the diverse needs of different consumer groups by setting multi-level ticket prices and service levels (such as second-class, first-class, business class, and soft sleeper).

The reason why first-class seats and business seats are sold more expensive is that they have already included "more spacious physical space", "less interference from neighboring seats", and "quieter riding environment" in the price premium in their product design. If passengers want to pursue absolute personal privacy and a more comfortable rest experience, they should legally obtain these space dividends through "upward compatibility (buying first-class or business seats)". On the contrary, regular hard seats and second-class seats are designed to safely send as many people home as possible at the most affordable price in extremely limited space, which we can call universal service.

But in this case, the two girls did not choose to purchase high-end seats in the most resource constrained and crowded hard seat carriage, but instead chose to use the method of "horizontal buyout quantity" to enclose space for luggage and snacks. This behavior is essentially about obtaining maximum benefits at the lowest cost.

The most interesting thing is that the statement from the official customer service of 12306, 'The seat disposal right belongs to the ticket purchaser,' precisely acknowledges this kind of arbitrage that crosses the ladder.

If 'horizontal buyout' is completely legal in basic carriages, why do railways still need business seats and first-class seats; Is it true that with money, one person can buy a whole row of second-class seats and lie horizontally to put snacks, forcing ordinary people who cannot buy tickets to stand at the junction of the carriage? This is not just a regression in management, but also a self denial of the logic of passenger pricing classification.

Seating in an International Perspective

Whenever there is a dispute in the railway system over ghost seats, overbearing seats, or buying multiple tickets and snacks, many people's idea is to solve it through technical problems: should the train station gates be connected to the train attendant machines in real time to release "missed seats"? Should we install traffic lights above each chair to measure human greed? Should we strictly investigate the purchase of tickets with multiple certificates? I call this idea the 'technical refinement myth'.

In fact, one person, one building is not that complicated. There has long been a set of effective measures internationally.

Friends who take international trains abroad know that the vast majority of trains abroad, including but not limited to Japan's Shinkansen, many intercity express trains in Europe (such as Deutsche Bahn and French non high speed rail lines), and most ordinary trains on Amtrak in the United States, have a large number of "non served seats" or a system of not matching seats throughout the train. Passengers can buy tickets and board the train, and once they see an empty seat, they can take it. In the train passenger notices of these countries, there is a default iron rule that has been universally accepted by all mankind since the birth of railways: one person can only occupy one seat.

In the luggage policy of Japan's Shinkansen and the travel habits of Europe and America, even if the carriage is empty, passengers must place large luggage in the luggage rack, under the seat, or in a dedicated luggage area; When the carriage is full and someone is standing, taking the initiative to take the bag and snacks away from the nearby seat and give them to fellow passengers is a social instinct and social morality that does not require anyone to remind, does not require coordination from the cabin crew, and does not require lengthy legal provisions to regulate.

Conclusion

The seats in high-speed train carriages have not been freely traded goods since their inception, but rather agreements based on the service process. The money spent by passengers is for the carrier's service process of "safely delivering people to their destination", rather than the "property rights" or "ownership of items" of this seat.

If seats are treated as "goods" for sale, managers can shake their hands and treat disputes as civil disputes over "how customers use goods themselves". But if it is recognized that this is a 'service', managers must understand that maintaining order and comfort in the carriage is itself a service content that must be provided after receiving payment, rather than a process of 'money and goods paid for'.

At the end of this article, the official Weibo account of China Railway Chengdu Group Co., Ltd. released an explanation on the network information of "passengers buying tickets, occupying seats, and putting snacks". The explanation points out that according to relevant laws and regulations and railway passenger transportation rules, if a passenger does not check the ticket and board the train after purchasing a ticket, it shall be deemed that the passenger does not exercise the right to use the seat during the period; Based on the principle of contractual relativity, third parties cannot occupy or dispose of the seat. For those with special needs, they can explain the situation to the train staff. In this incident, the passenger corresponding to seat 006 did not check for tickets and has given up their right to use the seat in the running section of the train. The other two passengers cannot occupy or dispose of the seat, and the train staff should coordinate and dispose of it according to the actual situation on site.

This official statement is highly consistent with the aforementioned legal analysis: the right to use vacant seats has been returned, ticket buyers have no right to use them as snack storage, and the reasonable needs of passengers without seats should also be coordinated on-site. It once again confirms that seats are for people to sit on, not for snacks. This should be a common sense and bottom line that public spaces should abide by.

(Author Fu Weigang)