I have commented before on the shortcomings of the design and implementation of Beijing's subway system expansion - notably here, in Olympic year. And four or five months ago, I described how parts of the system are getting completely overwhelmed, at least in the rush hours.
As the 'new towns' to the north of Beijing are now rapidly starting to fill up with people (after two or three years of ghost town status after they were first built), demand on the sole line serving them - Line 5, which was a pleasantly uncrowded line when it first opened just over three years ago - has gone through the roof. Did the 'planners' consider longer trains/platforms, higher train frequency, the possibility of running two tracks side-by-side to double capacity? It would seem not. I read recently that at the Tiantongyuan stop (one I used to use quite a bit in the past, to visit my journo friend New Dad - thank heavens he relocated to HK at the start of this year), the mob of would-be passengers gathering at 8 in the morning is so HUGE that people often have to wait for 40 minutes or more just to get inside the station.
Last night, I had to take Line 5 for the first time in quite a while, heading north out of the city centre - and it was almost impossible to board the trains (and very unpleasant to ride on them), even at around 7pm, somewhat after the rush-hour peak. Luckily, I only had to go a few stops before changing to Line 10 - the 'Olympic line' - to head towards the CBD. Passenger traffic in that direction had, mercifully, thinned out by this time (I suppose not many people commute from the CBD to work somewhere else), but the trains coming my way were like sardine tins.
Beijing is rapidly adding to its subway network, with several new lines, or extensions to existing lines, projected to enter service within the next three or four years (see below).
But.... the coverage will still be fairly limited for a city of this size. And the stations are mostly very badly designed, the platforms are too small, the capacity per train is not very high. Even worse, the lines are all enormously long, stretching 15 or 20 miles out into the suburbs: hence, by the time the trains reach the centre of the city, they are jam-packed. Even worse, most of them run north-south, leaving a serious shortfall in capacity in the east-west direction. And there's still comparatively little that runs through the very centre of the city, particularly around the main drag of Changan/Jianguomen. So, a large proportion of these millions of new passengers pouring in from the outlying commuter towns are getting funnelled on to the original two subway lines, which are now rather old and struggling to cope: thanks to this inept planning, the venerable Line 1 (the especially antiquated, low-capacity line that runs east-west through the heart of the city, and is now so crowded as to be almost unusable at any time of day) and Line 2 (the 'circle line' that follows the route of the 2nd Ringroad, bounding the city centre) are starting to approach the point of meltdown. Line 5 - the first of the new commuter lines - is already there, it would seem. So is Line 10, during peak periods. And Line 4 is rapidly heading in the same direction.
It would be nice to think that the opening of all these additional lines soon might ease the congestion somewhat. But in fact, I feel sure, they will quickly increase passenger volumes far beyond their planned capacity; and a substantial number of these new passengers will be delivered into the core of the system, Lines 1 and 2, which are already overloaded.
Beijing is teetering on the brink of a massive public transport crisis. Interesting times, indeed.
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