Travelling Beijing’s subway end to end, from the south-western dormitory suburb of Suzhuang to north-east Fengbo, where cranes loom over half-constructed blocks, takes five changes and almost three hours – but very little cash. The longest direct journey one can take on the subway here must also be one of the world’s best public transport bargains: 88km – a highly auspicious number in China – for just 2 yuan (roughly 20 pence).
In the weekday morning rush, accountants, shop assistants and researchers stare wearily at phones and jostle for space. There are fidgeting children with weary parents, labourers on their first ever subway ride, and several large eels, curled into an empty oil bottle en route to their carrier’s dinner table. It is late summer and the carriages are crammed, but air conditioning keeps it cool, blowing wafts of recently applied deodorant across the crowd.
“The subway is the pride of Beijing. It’s the only reason to live in this city,” says Liu Jinchang, a sales director, over one shoulder, since he does not have room to turn. His tone is jokey, his enthusiasm genuine: he has a car but prefers to commute this way because it is faster and easier than driving.
Data and voice services work on board (a mixed blessing) and TV screens in most carriages show the news, entertainment programming and public information films. Adverts are screened on the sides of tunnels as you speed between stations. Stations are clean, well lit and signed in both Chinese and English, but are not as gleaming as Hong Kong’s MTR (while state-owned Beijing Subway manages almost all of the network, MTR part-owns a second company operating two lines).
Older locations are a little shabby and only a handful boast decorative touches; Yonghegong has a red-and-gold classical bas relief and ornate railings with cloud mouldings that mimic traditional stone carving. This is a utilitarian system, reflecting former leader Deng Xiaoping’s orders that, at least in the first phase of the system, “The stations should not be built like those of the Moscow Metro. They should be solid and practical, not extravagant.”
In the next six and a half years, extensions to the Beijing subway will cover more ground than the entire London Underground network has in a century and a half.
Work on the Chinese capital’s first line started in the 1960s and the vast majority of it opened in the last decade. Yet, at 465km long, it has already outgrown the Tube network by more than 50km. By 2020, an extra 400bn yuan (£40bn) of investment will see it more than double to 1,000km, according to Chinese media. The addition of 17 new lines will make it one of the world’s longest networks.
Each day 9.75 million passengers ride the lines across Beijing: nearly three times as many as take the London Tube and twice as many as use the New York system. The subway’s phenomenal expansion reflects that of the city it serves. Over the last decade or so, Beijing has grown by roughly half a million inhabitants each year – the equivalent of adding the entire populations of Sheffield or Tucson annually. The city is already home to 21 million; by 2020, a report warned last year, it is likely to have added another four million, on a conservative estimate.
The subway is clean and punctual and has seen no large scale fatal transport disasters in recent years, though several workers have died during construction since 2007 and two passenger have died due to escalator collapse and electrocution, in addition to a number of suicides. (In 1969, the year it opened, a spate of fires killed between three and six people and injured at least 100 more, resulting in a two-year closure for reconstruction.)
But the strains it now faces reflect the country’s challenge in maintaining a decent quality of life in increasingly packed cities. At Xierqi, one of the busiest stations, platform attendants help to push commuters into carriages during rush hour. There’s a little shoving at the doors, but it’s a remarkably calm and polite scene given the crush of bodies.
Cut and cover
“I used to use the subway regularly, but it’s so crowded I rarely do now,” said 76-year-old Wang Mengshu.
As a young graduate, Wang helped to design the first line, which began construction in 1965 and opened four years later for select, politically reliable groups of passengers. Now an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Beijing Jiaotong University, he continues to advise the government on transport.
Mao declared the city needed a subway after he visited Moscow. But the system was initially intended more for civil defence than commuter transport, said Wang. In the event of air raids – like the US bombardments of North Korea and Vietnam – the trains would be used to evacuate residents to the Western Hills, on the capital’s outskirts. From there, they could be dispatched overground to safer parts of China. A sample line was even built at China’s atomic test site at Lop Nor, to check the tunnels would withstand nuclear bombs.
The engineering team was supposed to travel to Moscow to study its metro. But as bilateral relations deteriorated, the Soviet Union withdrew its experts and halted cooperation. Wang and his colleagues finished the designs of the subway without ever having ridden on one.
Without tunnelling equipment, workers used the “cut and cover” approach, digging a deep trench for each stretch of track, and constructing a tunnel which was then covered up again. Most of the remaining stretches of Beijing’s city walls were demolished to make way for the works and a ring road running above the tunnels.
Public irritation at the disruption meant there was little enthusiasm for extending the system. Nor was there much need: the population was far smaller and more densely distributed. As late as 2006, the subway carried only 1.5 million people a day. Now it copes with more passengers daily than it did in the whole of 1971, when it reopened – although admittedly, for the first 11 months, people could only buy a ticket with a letter of recommendation from their work unit.
These days, construction is much easier: in less built-up areas, lines are mostly overground, and tunnel drilling equipment can excavate around 600 metres a month (indeed, Chinese boring machines are now hard at work on Chennai’s new metro system). But dealing with the increased traffic is far from simple. The system is already exceeding capacity on several key lines.
China’s biggest cities are struggling to cope with their swollen populations, choked by traffic jams and pollution. They have attracted huge numbers of migrants – to clean the streets, construct homes and staff restaurants – but have not adequately catered for them or their children.
Now the government wants to accelerate urbanisation to boost domestic consumption; city dwellers spend more than rural residents. But its new strategy also seeks to tackle some of the problems that have emerged, creating a more sustainable model for city life.
The spending spree on urban rail follows similar binges on highways and high-speed trains, and will help to shore up economic growth. In just four months of 2012, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s economic planning body, approved 840bn yuan worth of underground and light rail construction; 22 cities already have subways and another 16 will have systems operating by the end of 2018. One official has said subway networks across China will total 7,000km of track by 2020.
Improved public transport should also reduce smog and traffic. Reforms to household registration will improve migrant workers’ access to services. But they are also designed to encourage people to move to smaller cities: the bigger the city, the harder it will be to register there. Even so, there is little doubt that the lure of the capital will endure.
“Ever since the 1980s, the [Beijing] government has been trying to limit the fast growing population, but all these efforts have failed. China has 1.3 billion people. Big cities like Beijing are bound to attract a significant part of the huge population,” said Li Tie, director general of the NDRC’s China Centre for Urban Development.
Tokyo accommodates 36 million residents in a smaller area, he noted: in theory, Beijing should be able to absorb another 10 million. But it does not feel like that to those who live and work here.
A four-hour commute – on a good day
“Go on! It’s late already!” Old Shi yells at the huffing figure in a grey T-shirt hurtling past towards the door of the 815 bus.
It is 6am in Yanjiao, around 40km east of Beijing, and already the queue winds along the street, past the soy milk and pancake stands. Like many parents, Old Shi comes down in the mornings to hold a place in the line for his son and daughter-in-law, giving them an extra half hour to gulp down breakfast and ready their child for kindergarten. But because his son is running late, he will probably have to stand in the aisle instead of waiting for a seat on the next bus.
The younger Shi should arrive in Beijing in around an hour and 40 minutes, where he will switch to the subway for the final stretch of his journey. Each day, he and his wife spend four hours commuting – if the traffic is light. On bad days it can stretch to five or more.
“They’re exhausted by the time they get home. Once we’ve had dinner and they’ve put the kid to bed they go straight to sleep themselves. They don’t even have time to watch television,” said his father.
The family could not buy a flat in the capital because his son does not have a Beijing hukou, or household registration. The hukou has been used to control property sales in big cities, as well as to determine rights to education, health and other services, and transferring registration is hard. In any case, city homes are vastly more expensive. Shi and his wife are white collar workers but their joint income will not stretch any further than Yanjiao.
Officials estimate that 150,000 people commute from here to Beijing each day; some say the figure is double that. By seven, you can count 200 people – damp-haired from the shower, blearily checking phones – in the bus queue.
Vehicles pull up every few minutes, but for each passenger who boards, another couple join the line. Those lucky enough to get a seat drowse; the rest must strap-hang all the way in. It is not surprising that tempers fray, though most of those waiting are remarkably good-humoured. When one man tries queue-jumping on his son’s behalf, there is almost a fist fight.
Chinese media suggest Yanjiao is the likely destination for the next subway extension. “I’d donate a month of my own salary to have a station built out here,” Old Shi says.
But as more communities are connected to the system, the pressure on existing lines will increase. And many Beijing residents already chafe at how hectic the city is becoming.In his book Urbanisation, Li compares the process to allowing extra people into the elevator of a high-rise building: “Those who have been enjoying urban public services are unwilling to share the services with anyone else, [least of all] the migrant workers who they believe to be inferior, undereducated and underpaid,” he writes.
“A city is like an elevator. If you increase the number of passengers but fail to upgrade the elevators, those on board will start to complain.”
Yang Xingkun, of the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, said that if passenger numbers continued to rise at the current rate, they could hit 16 million by 2020. A plan to integrate Beijing, Hebei province and Tianjin could produce an even greater leap.
But upgrading is not easy. Though capacity can theoretically be increased by shortening the intervals between trains, Yang said key lines have almost reached the safe minimum gaps for services during peak hours.
Developing regional economic centres on the outskirts of Beijing – such as Daxing and Tongzhou – would encourage public institutions and companies to move and reduce traffic flows into the centre, he said. One mooted proposal is for a wholesale clothing market near Beijing zoo to shift to Langfang in Hebei, reducing pressure not just on the nearest subway station, but on that line more generally.
Authorities have promised to better integrate Beijing with nearby Tianjin municipality and Hebei province, to boost development across the region and relieve some of the strain on the capital. The catchily named Jing-Jin-Ji proposal will take in up to 130 million people and require yet more infrastructure: “Beijing’s seventh ring road”, actually running through large swathes of Hebei, will stretch to 940km when it opens in 2017.
But Jin Xue, an expert on China’s urban development at Aalborg University, is concerned by the growing tendency for cities to sprawl outwards.
“Historically, the urban density of Chinese cities was really high,” she said. “In recent years, [in places], it has been decreasing … Compact and high density cities should still be pursued, not just to preserve farmland, but to reduce traffic volumes.”
Better planning, such as seeking to bring homes and workplaces closer, could reduce long commutes and cut congestion.
In the short term, planners hope to relieve the strain on the Beijing subway and claw back hefty subsidies by raising fares. Last year losses hit 3.46bn yuan – almost four times the 2007 level – thanks to high operating costs and low fares. Incredibly, tickets are cheaper now than they were in 2006; officials dropped the flat-rate fare by one yuan to attract passengers.
Authorities have already carried out a public consultation on ticket price increases; remarks suggest they are looking at distance-based and perhaps time-sensitive pricing. Reportedly, more than half the respondents approved of higher fares – but what kind of rise they would stomach is unclear. The Beijing Evening News said fares would have to triple for the system to break even.
In an increasingly unequal society, where social differences have become glaring, the subway is a relatively democratic space. Yes, the poorest of all take buses and the richest still drive their Ferraris; but beneath the ground, managers check messages on their iPhones alongside migrant workers lugging bundled quilts. Raising prices would reduce the pressure for those who can afford it, but add to the stress for the poorest.
“If prices rise to four or five yuan, I’ll stop taking the subway. At my age I don’t have a lot of money,” said 49-year-old Li Zhongqin, a cleaner. That would mean changing buses and starting her long day even earlier – and transport experts say more and better planned bus routes are desperately needed.
Meanwhile, the better off may choose to drive, at a time when Beijing is seeking to reduce car use.
Even Wang, the tunnelling expert, believes much of the answer to China’s urban transport problems lies above ground. He would like to see more bus use and new rail links between the busiest train stations. He is unimpressed by the frenzy of excavation around the country: monorails cost around 150m yuan per kilometre to construct, he said, compared to the 500-700m yuan required per kilometre of subway.
“Second-, third-, fourth-tier cities ... those cities don’t need to build subways,” he said. “Even if they can afford to build them, they can’t afford to run them. But a lot of places think that if they have a subway, then they are a big city.”
Additional research by Luna Lin
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