Planning, Investment, Construction and Operation of Rail Transit in Beijing Research conducted by Dr. LIU Jian, Associate Professor of Urban Planning & Design ZUO Xiaoxuan, Master of Urban Planning & Design, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University With the Sponsorship of IVM 2011
1. Evolution of rail transit construction in Beijing As the first Chinese city in constructing an urban rail transit system, Beijing had compiled its first subway system plan in 1957 with the objective of “combing civil and military uses.” The planned subway system was composed of one loop line, seven radiating lines and 114 stations with a mileage of 172 km. Yet, due to historical reasons, the subway construction was not started until 1965. When the first subway line, running from Ping-guo-yuan in the west to Beijing Railway Station in the east with a mileage of 23.6 km and 17 stations, was partly completed in October1969, it became the first subway line in Mainland China. That made Beijing even more advanced than Hong Kong, Singapore, San Francisco, Washington and Seoul in terms of rail transit development. This subway line was put into trial operation on 15 January 1971. However, being classified as an engineering project for wars at that time, it was not open to the public for civil use, and only the personnel who had an attestation from their institutions could make a visit to it. Moreover, because of technical issues, accidents happened frequently in the following decade.
The trial run of the first subway line for more than ten years was ended on 15 September 1981 when it was officially opened to the public for civil use. Afterwards, on 20 September 1984, the second subway line was also put into operation, which linked Fu-xing-men in the west to Jian-guo-men in the east in the “n” shape, with a mileage of 16.1 km and 12 stations. On 28 December 1987, following the completion of new constructions, the two subway lines were restructured to form two new lines, that is, Line 1 running from Ping-guo-yuan in the west to Fu-xing-men in the east and Line 2 running along the inner city wall of the Old City of Beijing. Later on, till 28 June 2000, Line 1 had been extended further eastwards to Si-hui Station.
During the period from 1965 to 2000, only 42 km of subways had been constructed in Beijing. But