Riding the Rails

A sneak peek at the new Line 5 subway

Somehow, it wasn’t ironic that the Olympic Committee had to drive us to Beijing’s newest subway line in a tour bus. Correction: we weren’t driving at all. We were sitting idle in traffic. Therein was the reason we were visiting the subway in the first place. As the city slowly edges toward Bangkok-style traffic, officials have planned for three new lines in time for the 2008 games, and are promising the world’s largest subway system by 2020. Though it’s not set to open until September, the city is already testing, tuning and touting the north-south line 5, the first addition to its soon-to-be rapidly expanding subway network.

For now though, one of the only clues to that future lies beneath Chang’an Dajie, at an unassuming underpass across the street from Oriental Plaza. A couple of young security guards jumped up from their naps when we arrived, promptly opening a shiny metal gate to let us descend into the newest Beijing underground. The floors and walls were still clean, the escalator unfinished; at the bottom of a long set of stairs we found ourselves in what looked like an unfinished set from Star Wars. Gleaming signs, LED lights, a glass-encased control room, and cables rising from the floor waiting to connect to card-scanning turnstiles that will replace the subway’s ubiquitous ticket ladies. Before a tear could rise up, we regained our senses and scanned the room for other signs of Beijing’s “high-tech” Olympics: lasers, 3-D maps, new bathrooms.

And then we saw the future, hanging along the platform: large flat-screen TVs showing traffic information, news tickers and, for no reason at all, the latest Harry Potter movie. TVs also hung on the walls of the train itself, showing slow-motion images of athletes hurling themselves through the air interspersed with dramatic ribbon dancing and every now and then, the Beijing 2008 logo. Come the Olympics, commuters will be able to watch the sporting events live. As we stood in front of a screen and beneath a stream of cool air – having been whisked to the new Yonghegong subway station, which looks slightly like a modern version of the temple above – it dawned on us: might the lazier among us pass on the actual games (or on a visit to Yonghegong for that matter) for the air-conditioned idyll of the subway?

That good idea almost flew out of our heads as we wandered out of the car; more precisely, it was knocked out by a collision with the overhead handrail. That, along with the subway door itself, was noticeably shorter than on the city’s current subway. “You’re too tall,” a subway official told us with a smile. “But what about Yao Ming?” we asked. No answer.

Height prejudices aside, the subway is a definite improvement: the stations are spiffier (if a bit sterile), the train’s wider on the inside and, like Hong Kong’s MTR, has no doors in-between cars, a cool trick that turns the subway cars into one long moving hallway. And somehow, the air underground felt clean. Plus: three kuai is a lot cheaper than a ticket to the Olympics.

Permalink 09:17:53, From that's Beijing's City Scene