Proposal for construction of the longest subway in Beijing has
passed government examination and appraisal and will be built
within the year.
The Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning has announced
that the No.6 subway will run from east to west across the north of
the city for 41.74 km which will run parallel with the existing
No.1 line.
It will be the longest of the kind in Beijing to be built so
far, said the commission.
The No. 6 line is designed to have 28 stations, including 13
interchange stations. The line will run from Wulu area in Haidian
District of western Beijing, to Dongxiaoying, Tongzhou in the
east.
It is expected to enormously alleviate pressure on the existing
east-west transport routes in the Chinese capital, industry
observers said.
Work will also start within the year on five other subway lines:
the No. 8 and 9 lines, the second phase of the No. 10 line, and the
Yizhuang and Daxing lines. The six new lines will have a total
length of 152 kilometers and will be completed by 2012.
Beijing has five subway lines in operation, with a total length
of 142 kilometers.
"The city aims to raise the proportion of citizens choosing
public transport from the current 30 percent to 45 percent by 2015,
said the commission's Zhou Nansen.
The municipal government of Beijing has been making painstaking
efforts to boost public transport, ease road congestion and improve
air quality ahead of the Olympics.
To encourage more people to use mass transit for travels, the
city government on Oct. 7 introduced a new subway pricing system
under which subway fares are cut by about 30 percent.
Now a single-journey ticket costs just two yuan (US$27 cents),
no matter how long one travels and how many times one transfers
between lines.
(Xinhua News Agency October 31, 2007)