[photopress:beijing_subway.jpg,full,alignright]In 2008 people should start collecting the RMB3 tickets needed to travel on Beijing’s subway. First they will be scrap, then they will be emphera and then they will be rememberances of a time past.
Replacing them totally, in time for the Olympic Games, will be IC cards. One swipe of the card and you are through. This is all part of the plan to modernize the metro system which may get more passengers off the roads and thus ease the city’s worsening traffic gridlock.
Subway journeys will be charged by distance probably starting at RMB3 which puts the subway ahead of the game in potential income as soon as it starts.
IC cards were introduced in April this year and have had a fair acceptance but, shortly before the Olympic Games, it will be all over. All 1.3 million passengers who use Beijing’s metro system every day will be using cards. That 1.3 million figure has peaked as high as two million and beyone those figures paper tickets are practically an impossibility.
Beijing currently has two subway lines and two light rail tracks, totaling 114 kilometers. Three more subway lines are under construction and will be completed by 2008 Olympic Games. By 2020 the subway system will have extended to 561 kilometers making it the world’s most extensive underground.
Source: China.org