BEIJING -
The Beijing subway system, also known as the
Metro, will stretch to 561 kilometers by 2020,
overtaking the London Underground and the New York
City Subway as the longest subway system in the
world, according to a recently completed
construction plan.
According to the plan,
the 561km will be laid out along 19 lines woven
together beneath the Chinese capital.
Unlike metro lines 1 and 2 (the loop
lines), which encircle the
Tiananmen Square area, the
capital's traditional city center, the new lines
are expected to reach all corners of Beijing.
Fifteen of the new lines will support
urban areas, while the remaining four will stretch
out to the suburbs, according to the plan drafted
by the city's communications commission.
Zhao Hui, a researcher who helped draft
the plan, said it represented a long-term vision
and was therefore subject to change. The Beijing
Municipal Development and Reform Commission, the
city government's economic-planning body, still
has to approve the plan, he noted.
Lines
4, 5 and 10 are under construction and are
expected to be operational for the 2008 Summer
Olympic Games.
Line 4 will connect Fengtai
in the extreme south with Haidian in the
northwest, spanning 28.16km. This line will
represent the first direct link between Beijing's
two "poles".
Line 5 will serve a similar
function, creating a short-cut route between the
"developed" north and "developing" south, from
Changping to Fengtai districts.
The city
is also building Line 10, which will form an arc
whose tips will be Haidian and Chaoyang districts.
This line will link up the northwestern and
eastern-southeastern sections of the city.
A 5.91km section of Line 10 is aimed at
easing travel relating to the 2008 Olympics.
Zhao said Line 11 would be finished in
2012 and link with Line 10. The new loop line
created by the two linked lines will thread
through major city centers including Zhongguancun
technology zone, the Central Business District and
the Olympic zone.
Currently four metro
lines serve Beijing. Lines 1 and 2 span 54km,
while Line 13 and Line Batong cover 61km. Together
they carry 1.5 million travelers every day.
Beyond building new subway lines,
transportation experts have been exploring other
possibilities for the city's underground space to
help ease the traffic pressure.
During the
recent International Academic Conference on
Underground Space, the Beijing Urban Planning
Commission and Beijing Urban Planning and
Designing Research Institute jointly released a
new plan proposing the construction of six
underground expressways by 2020, to ease traffic
congestion further, mainly within the second and
third rings.
Shi Xiaodong, a senior
planner with the planning and design research
center, said moving more transportation
underground would help eliminate noise pollution
and reduce traffic in the old urban area.
However, Duan Liren, an expert with the
Beijing Transportation Management Engineering
Institute, warned officials involved to be
cautious about developing the underground express
system.
"Such a large-scale underground
expressway system would be unprecedented in the
world, and we have little experience to draw upon.
The technological difficulties and construction
costs of this system will exceed those of the
metro system," said Duan.
