Transportation
Expressways in Beijing
(figures below are listed in descending order)
BeijingtoHarbin 1,400kilometres
BeijingtoTongzhou 18.6kilometres
BeijingtoTaiyuan 515kilometres
BeijingtoKaifeng (Beijing section) 42kilometres
BeijingtoShijiazhuang 270kilometres
BeijingtoTianjin&Tanggu 142kilometres
BeijingtoChangping via Great wall to Chadaocheng 69.98kilometres
BeijingtoShenyang 658.33kilometres
BeijingtoBadaling 69.98kilometres
BeijingtoShanghai 1,262kilometres
CapitalIntl.Airport Exp. 19kilometres
(CapitalAirport to Sanyuanqiao)
The Inner Second Ring Road 23.6 kilometres
The outer Second Ring Road 32.7 kilometres (opened to traffic in September 1992)
The Third Ring Road 48 kilometres (opened to traffic in 1994 with 52 bridges)
The Fourth Ring Road 65.3 kilometres (with 147 bridges on it, opened to traffic in June 2001)
The Fifth Ring Road 94.5 kilometres (15.2 kilometres opened to the traffic in September 2001)
The Sixth Ring Road 188 kilometres (26.5 kilometres from Tongzhou to Majuqiao opened to traffic, 100 kilometres per hour); 22 kilometres from Tongzhou to Huangcum
Seventh Ring Road 440 kilometres
Beijing—Miyun Expressway 69 kilometres
The Beijing municipal government has officially named the Fourth Ring Road the “OlympicBoulevard.” The boulevard has eight-lanes with 147 flyovers to connect with the major streets of the city. The construction of three streets—Deshengmenwai, Xizhimenwai and Xueyuanlu—in northwestern Beijing to connect the Second, Third and Fourth Ring roads were finished in June 2001. The three roads have been designed without traffic lights to speed up traffic flow and ease the city’s transportation pressure. Guang’an Avenue, the third major east-west street in the city, opened to traffic in July 2001.Parallel to Chang’an Boulevard and located in southern Beijing,the Guang’an Avenue has promoted the development of southern Beijing, which has lagged behind the rest of the city. Transportation is always a challenge for any city. By 2007, a fairly sophisticated transportation network will be completed. The five ring roads with linked expressways, the newly built city rail and the Olympic subway will contribute to an efficient transport system.
Built an average of 2.5 kilometres away from the city’s Third Ring Road, the new road boasts a total length of 65.3 kilometres, including 147 overpasses of various scales. Its designed hourly speed is 80 to 100 kilometres, much higher than that of the city’s other two ring roads—55 to 65 kilometres per hour.
Seven expressways in and out of Beijing
1. Jingjintang （Beijing-Tianjin-Tanggu） Expressway(Beijing section: 37.6 kilometres)
2. Jingshi (Beijing-Shijiazhuang) Expressway(Beijing section:45.6kilometres, construction of the expressway began in 1986 and completed in November 1993, taking 7 years to complete; it was the first of its kind ever builtin Beijing; The first expressway from Bonn to Coln in Germany was built in 1932 in the world; The first expressway from Shanghai to Jiading was built in 1988, taking three years to build)
3. Capital Intl. Airport Expressway (19 kilometres)
4. Badaling Expressway (69.98 kilometres)
5. Jingtong (Beijing-Tongzhou) Expressway (18.6 kilometres)
6. JIngha (Beijing-Harbin) Expressway (Beijing section: 31.9 kilometres)
7. Jingshen (Beijing-Shenyang) Expressway (Beijing section: 39.8 kilometres)
8. Beijing-Kaifeng Expressway from Beijing’s southern Part (Yuquanying) to Gu’an Bridge of Hebei Province totaling 42.65 kilometres; the section, costing 2.71 billion yuan (US$326.5 million), and opened to traffic in June 2001.
Light Rail in Beijing
Beijing’s urban traffic congestion has been greatly eased thanks to the launching of the city’s light rail project.The initial tracks of Beijing’s first light railway line were laid down on October 1,2001. Started in October 2000, Construction of the light rail began at the Huilongguan (a residential area encompassing 8.5 million square meters and home to 230,000 residents) East Station in the Huilongguan residential areas in northern Beijing’s Changping District. The light rail stretches from the Huilongguan East Station to Xizhimen in the west, a communications hub, and Dongzhimen in the east. Construction of the light rail has been divided into two sections. The western section of Beijing’s light railway, from Huilongguan to Xizhimen was finished in May 2002 and the eastern section from Huilongguan to Dongzhimen was completed by September 2002. With 16 Stations, the 40.9-kilometre light rail opened to traffic before October 2002. The decibel levels in areas around the railway meet with the national standard. To reduce the noise caused by the trains, each track has been fused with anither to make the railwau line free of cracks and special acoustic celotex boards have been set up at Zhongguancun, the site of the Chinese academy of Sciences and in residential areas. Since most of the basic infrastructure work was completed on the western section in July 2001, including the viaduct construction, railway stations, and rail-bed construction, the railway line inches towards completion at a speed of 1.2-1.25-kilometres per day. The urban railway goes through the Zhongguancun Science and TechnologyPark in Haidian District, which is also home to dozens of unicersities and research institutions. Thanks to the light rail, the time required neighbourhoods to central Beijing has been markedly cut, with Xizhimen and Dongzhimen, the two terminal stations of the railway, connecting with the ring subway and many public transportation lines, and will invite more people to move out of downtown districts. With an inverstment of 6.6 billion yuan (US$780 million), the railway line is the most environmentally friendly, convenient and comfortable in the CapitalCity. The light rail transoports more than 14,000 commuters per day and can serve more than 28,000 passengers in the future.
Xizhimen and Dongzhimen, the two terminal stations of the railway ,connect with the ring subway and many public transportation lines. The traffic flow is more convenient for passengers. Construction of the railway has promoted the real estate market to heat up in areas around the line, especially in Huilongguan and Xisanqi.
Design of another light rail in Beijing is completed and construction will begin soon. The section light rail system will start from Sihui East Station in the east to Tongzhou District in Beijing’s eastern suburb.
According to the latest plan, the rail network includes 13 lines, with a total length of nearly 400 kilometres. Twenty cities in China are preparing for the construction of subways or light railways.
Taxi in Beijing
In a bid to upgrade the city’s taxi industry, Beijing has its first Joint-venture taxi company. Beijing-based Jinjian Taxi Company and Delgo Taxi Management Company from Singapore have agreed to establish the first taxi company in the city. The joint venture has an initial investment totaling 250 million yuan (US$30.2 million) and 3,300 taxicabs. Delgo is a large taxi company in Singapore that owns 5,000 cabs, occuping one-third of the total number in Singappore. It is also the first company who applied Benz as taxicabs in Singapore. According to China’s relevant regulations, a Sino-foreign joint venture taxi company must pay its cars in China. The cars may be made in China or imported. For imported cars, tariffs might be reduced or cancelled. Besides using high-grade cars, the company will equip the cabs with global positioning system and attach more importance to driver training. The joint venture keeps the brand of Jinjian, since it has established a high reputation in Beijing. The Chinese part, Beijing Jinjian Taxi Company,, is one of the famous branded taxi ventures in Beijing. It has 3,500 cabs of various models. Delgo has set up joint ventures in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenyang. As the capital, Beijing has a large population and is visited by many people for better services and hardware equipment. The Beijing municipal government had descided to foster more big taxi companies with better services and equipment, and phase out small, bad-performing ones. The government will reduce the number of taxi operating companies from more than 800 to just 200 by resturing, mergers, and granting licenses. It is aiming to establish 20 brand-name operating companies, which run 40,000 brand-name taxicabs. The city now has a total of 67,000 taxis run by 80,000 taxi drivers, accounting for 12 per cent of the city’s ground transportation. In the next six years, all of Beijing’s taxis will be equipped with global positioning systems (GPS), which help the taxi drivers to make good use of the geographical information to find their costumers and to find different locations. By 2008, 80 per cent of Beijing taxis will use natural gas, a clean energy, to reduce the city’s air pollution. The municipal government is considering the gradual phase out of Xiali taxis, a relatively low-grade car, to brighten the city’s look.
Reappearing of Pedicabs in Beijing
In Beijing today, there are more than 5,000 public buses, about 600 trolley buses, and nearly 70,000 taxis. But they have not fully taken the place of pedicabs. There are now over 500,000 registered pedicabs in the CapitalCity now.
Most pedicabs begin work late at night afterregular buses stop. Or they go out early in the morning before the first buses pull out of their terminals. Only a few night buses and taxis share business with the pedicabs during those hours. Slowly and smoothly, the pedicabs ride on the streets, and the passengers really can see the sights. Therefore, in the day, some tourists would like to take a pedicab. There is another reason why pedicabs are sometimes at a premium. Beijing is an ancient city famous for its vast number of tiny hutong narrow alleys behind the broad streets and avenues. A taxi seldom bothers to go into these hutongs. When it does, the taxi finds the alleys leading nowhere. A pedicab is useful in such occasion. To most pedicab drivers, whom were born Beijingers, the hutongs zigzag to everywhere. A pedicab is able to take the passenger to placesdep in the alleys unmarked on maps.
Pedalling a pedicab is a lucrative job. It attracts many unemployed young people and retired workers. Even a few state factory workers resigned from their jobs and become self- employed drivers, in spite of their ensured salaries and welfare subsidies. They can make a fortune out of pedaling a pedicab. The drivers are usually warm-hearted towards their customers. In the early 1950s, there were 100 pedicab service stations with more than 5,,000 drivers, most of them carrying freight. Because of a lack of public buses, pedicabs were once a major means of passenger transport in Beijing too. In 1960s, more than 1,000 pedicab stations were set ip in urban districtfor round-the –clock service. Pedicabs were banned as an example of a“man-exploiting-man” phenomenon during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Motorized rickshaws replaced pedicabs, but they soon were dismissed because of air pollution and noise. The pedicabs reappeared in the late 1970s and have shown no sign of disappearing from the scene again. Sometimes, people can see that overseas tourists enjoy the city by sitting on pedicabs.
Bicycle
There are now about 1,500 million bicycles in the world, of which 470 million bicycles in China represent about one third of the total number of bicycles in the world.
For every100 families there are 160 bicycles in cities in China and 80 bicycles per 100 families in rural areas. No wonder people in the world unanimously acknowledge that China is the kingdom of bicycles.
As for the innovator of the world’s first bike, people have different views, and no final conclusion has yet been reached on this matter.
Historical records show that during Qing Emperor Kangxi’s reign (1662-1722), Hung Luzhuang, a skillful craftsman, made a hand-operated, self-walking bike. In 1790, a French person produced a “wooden horse” which many people think is one of the world’s first bicycles. In 1880, a Russian manufactured the world;s first bike with metal chain drive. By 1839, an Englishman invented a bike with pedals fixed on the wheels. But the bike was made ofwood . Inventions relating to the bike have reached more than 15,000 in the world.
Foreign and Regional Airlines Offices in Beijing
NameTelephone
Aeroflot (SU) 65002412/65002980
Air France (AF) 65881388
Air Macau (NX) 65063505
Alitalia (AZ) 65067163
All Nippon Airways (NH) 65909191
Asian Airline (OZ) 64681118
British Airways (BA) 65124070
Canadian Airlines Intl LTD (LP) 64649168
Chosnminhang Korean Airways (J) 65323981
Dragonair (KA) 65182533/65183450
EI AI Israel Airlines (LY) 65974514
Ethiopian Airlines (ET) 65050314/65050315
Finnair (AY) 65127180/65127181
Interflug (IF) 65006678/65127181
Indonesian Airlines (GA) 65052901
Irannair (IR) 65124840/4945/65002255ext.3710
Japan Airlines (JL) 65053775/65130888
Korean Airline (KE) 84538888
Lufthansa German Airliness (LH) 64653500/64654488
Malaysia Airlines (MH) 65052681
Mongolia Airlines (OM) 65014544
Northwest Airlines (NW) 65053505
Pakistan Intl. (PK) 65051681/65051682
Philippine Airlines (PR) 65127180/65050136
Polish Airlines (LO) 65050136/65052288 ext.102
Qantas (QF) 64673337
Royal Brunei 65055073 ext.3
SAS (SK) Scandinavian Airlines 85276100
Singapore Airlines (SQ) 65052233
Swissair (SR) 65125425
Tarom (RO) 65323552
Thai Airways Intl. (TG) 64608899
United Airlines (UA) 64631111 |
