BEIJING, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Hundreds of residents jostled behind police cordons at Xizhimen station in the Chinese capital Saturday for the first of phase of a new subway line commencing operations.
In the run up to the 2008 Summer Olympics, China has earmarked $21.68 billion to improve the city's infrastructure and environment for the sporting event. According to state run media sources, half of that amount is going into subway and light railway transportation projects.
Chinese figures for the period 1996-2001 indicate Beijing's two subway lines already in operation carried more than 2.3 billion passengers, averaging more than a million passengers per day.
A subway ticket in Beijing costs about 35 cents for admission to use Lines 1 or 2, which are linked at two transfer points, or 60 cents if the trip includes the newly opened route which is called Line 13.
Pricing is based on admission rather than distance traveled.
The first phase of Line 13 opening Saturday afternoon adds nine new stations to the 39 already in service. Six more stations are slated to be operational by Jan. 28, 2003 in time for Chinese Lunar New Year Celebrations.
The new line opens the city's northwestern Haidian District to mass transit. Haidian is home to high-tech development zones and many of Beijing's premiere universities and research institutes.
Reflecting the massive urban expansion of the city, Line 13 also touches the southern border of Changping District, a place which previously carried the lesser political boundary status of county within the Beijing municipality.
Unlike the other two subway lines, Line 13 is above ground, giving riders a panoramic view of Beijing's famed Western Hills as well as new city streets linking high rise residential and commercial buildings sprouting up on land which was in agricultural use
less than five years ago.
Slogans of "New Olympics, New Beijing, New Subway" and "Strive to make high quality Beijing residents" on blackboards placed inside one transfer station are a small part of an ongoing campaign exhorting the public to use mass transit in an orderly fashion.
Other efforts to build a civil society on the move include illustrated posters to "Stand on the Right,Walk on the Left" when using escalators plus commonplace admonitions such as no loitering or littering.
The upcoming week long holiday for National Day (Oct. 1-8) and critical Communist Party Congress in November has resulted in an increased police presence at subway stations.
United Press International observed uniformed officers checking identifications using PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and IBM laptop computers.
Despite some pushing and shoving, dense crowds looking to ride the new subway line were orderly. No major incidents were reported.
