Skip to Content
Streetsblog USA home
Streetsblog USA home
Log In
Streetsblog.net

China Racing Past Competitors to Expand City Subways

11:57 AM EDT on September 12, 2012

More than 100 years ago, workers making next to nothing built New York City's first subways using pick axes, dynamite, and steel wheelbarrows. At a recent trip to New York's Transit Museum, I had to marvel at the exhibit "Steel, Stone and Backbone," which details the conditions under which these workers labored and the shockingly limited technology that was at their disposal.

false

Many decades later, the product of their work is still essential to the best transit system in America, and has helped make New York City the largest, most prosperous city in the nation. It makes you wonder, what's happened to America's ambition when it comes to building transit?

Well, maybe it's gone to China. Yonah Freemark at the Transport Politic reports that while growth has started to slow in China, you would never know it by the way that country is building transit lines in its major cities. Even though subway construction costs, according to Freemark, are quickly approaching the levels in developed countries, China is still on pace to have five times the amount of metro track as the U.S. by 2020:

About $127 billion (or 800 billion yuan) is to be directed over the next three to eight years to build 25 subways and elevated rail lines as a stimulus whose major benefit will be an increase in mobility for the rapidly urbanizing nation.

Though China’s high-speed rail network (now the largest in the world) has garnered most of the headlines when it comes to transportation there, the nation’s investments in urban rail have been just as dramatic and serve far more people on a daily basis. Its three largest metropolitan areas — Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing — feature the world’s fourth, fifth, and sixth most-used transit systems, providing more than five million rides each daily, more than similar networks in New York or Paris. Most of these cities’ lines opened since 2000.

Yet the government does not accept the premise that a transit network that requires subsidies is necessarily a problem, at least based on its willingness this month to extend advance (and therefore heavily subsidized) loans to municipalities building transit lines. In general, the new national aid, which comes in the form of very reduced borrowing costs, will allow for the fast-tracking of projects already in the pipeline, much as Los Angeles has hoped to do with its transit projects. On average, 42% of financing will be directed from local governments, with the rest financed by banks, all benefiting from the lower bond rates. Costs will be eventually covered through long-term tax revenue.

By 2020, China will have 40 cities with metros extending 7,000 route kilometers, more than five times what exists in the United States today.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Bike Portland explains that outdated street design manuals are resulting in inferior cycling treatments in Portland. Streets.mn wonders if we can start designing streets that "forgive" mistakes by the most vulnerable users instead of just drivers. And Human Transit thinks some aspects of new urbanism conflict with sound transit planning.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog USA

Want a Better 15-Minute City? Ask Residents What They Really Want

A new study from Bogotá models how other cities can ask a deeper set of questions about how to put essential needs within walking, biking or transit distance.

March 19, 2024

Tuesday’s Headlines Win the Gold

Two articles detail efforts in Paris and Los Angeles to put on (relatively) climate-friendly Olympic games in 2024 and 2028.

March 19, 2024

Monday’s Headlines Drink Your Milkshake

How does a president end wasteful subsidies for the highly profitable fossil fuel industry? Many have tried, but none have succeeded, including Joe Biden.

March 18, 2024

How — and Why — To Start a Neighborhood E-Bike Library

American advocates are loaning out e-bikes to their neighbors — and creating flocks of new riders.

March 18, 2024

What Urbanists’ Doug Burgum Lovefest Reveals About the ‘Why’ Behind Our Advocacy

I am far less interested in talking about Gov. Doug Burgum's politics than talking about his values, and how those values shape his urbanism, and thus the actual lives of the people he governs.

March 15, 2024
See all posts