Beijing A to B - Subway System

Who This Is For: Mobile + Mobile People on Lines 1 and 2

Nope — we haven’t gotten to the stage yet where your rides on the Beijing Subway earn you points to pay your mobile bill. Yet. (And with the recent impasse between the Subway company and the mobile telcos, we think that kind of stuff is probably reserved for the next ice age, or somewhere around that time.)

But yes — if you’re riding the Subway system and suddenly want to top up on your mobile phone charges (or pay your subscription fees by using top up cards), you’ll be able to help yourself to mobile phone top up cards at nine Subway stations (all are on Lines 1 or 2):

• Line 1 stations: Yuquanlu, Gongzhufen, Military Museum, Muxidi, Nanlishilu
• Line 2 stations: Andingmen, Gulou, Chegongzhuang, Xuanwumen

Your only way to nab these cards, by the way, is by — plastic — once again. Nope, you can’t use your Super Pass on this one yet; you’ll need a plain-vanilla China UnionPay-savvy card (your local bank card is probably UnionPay-ready). If you’re thinking of paying by cash, you’ll need to wait; right now, it’s UnionPay-only.

These machines, by the way, are ready to offer you even more services in the future. Once the whole machine’s geared up to do its full set of “things”, so to speak, you’ll be able to buy mobile phone numbers, or pay your bills or top up — and yup, all of this will be self-service. Ahh, futurespeak.

By the way, if you need an official invoice, you’ll need to go to an authorized mobile telco dealer.

Half-baked or a convenience already? We’ll let you figure that one out.

Technorati Tags: Beijingology, Beijing transit, Beijing Subway, Line 1, Line 2
Sources: Local (with reference to Qianlong Beijing)
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Who This Is For: Line 5 and 10 people

What happens when you open two new trunk Subway lines in less than a year’s time? You make 1.28 million more people go underground.

Not to mention the massive storm of passengers flooding onto Lines 5 and 10 — two of the most important Subway lines in the entire Chinese capital. The stats have it: August 12, 2008 saw new records for passengers on Lines 5 and 10.

4.104 million people went underground on the 12th — those include around 714,000 people for Line 5 and around 566,000 people for Line 10.

Also noteworthy is the mass deluge of passengers at Wukesong station on Line 1. Remember — these people love basketball…

Technorati Tags: Beijingology, Beijing transit, Beijing Subway, Line 5, Line 10
Sources: Local (with reference to Beijing transit authorities)
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Who This Is For: Line 10 people armed with a mobile phone

Within about 24 hours after the first mobile signals became reality on Line 10, your Beijingologist took a dive into the underground world — and was impressed.

Test drive stations: Jintaixizhao and Hujialou

1. Access into the Subway station

No worries here — full signal on the ground, full signal beyond the faregates. Waiting for a Line 10 train, I started, in essence, mucking around with the phone — nothing happened that would have made the signal go kaputt. Full signal here.

2. On the Line 10 train

I started writing a short text message — it got sent. (My phone didn’t make a racket, however, so it took me quite a while to figure out that I actually got a reply.) As we neared Hujialou, I started going on the Web, trying to tweet. (My new phone has a less-than-ideal UI, so the tweeting didn’t go as expected. Still, full signals, no sweat.)

3. Out and in again

I got the short text message as I popped my head out at Hujialou exit B and started heading back to exit C1. A pretty semi-sticky-ish morning, for sure, but at least the signals worked.

Back at Jintaixizhao — and no bit of mobile coverage loss. It seems like Line 10 will soon be yet another Subway line where the noise level gets that bit louder.

Technorati Tags: Beijingology, Beijing transit, Beijing Subway, Line 10
Sources: Local
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Who This Is For: Riders on Lines 1 and 2 with sharp ears

Ever been on a Subway Line 1 or Line 2 train lately? The Chinese announcements now sound a lot “softer” than before (they already sounded pretty “soft”); yours truly compares that kind of “softness” to that of a romantic couple, with the girl obviously in a super-romantic mood, tone-wise. In the meantime, the English announcements are now done fully by expats in Beijing: this time, they’ve picked an American to do the announcements. (The whole thing sounds super-rhotic, by the way, for those of you linguists out there.) On a probably less romantic and more informative note, the new announcements were put in place to add references to the new Line 10 and the Airport Express, which opened at 14:00 on July 19, 2008.

The previous announcements on Lines 1 and 2 were done by the older Ms Lines 1 and 2, whose Chinese version sounds precisely like that of Ms Line 10, and whose English incarnation was the laughingstock of the city, accent-wise; jumping up and down, sometimes super-loud, and more often than not, a real stoccato.

Furthermore, Subway fans have noted (although Beijingology has not confirmed) that Lines 13 and the Batong Line, too, now feature the new Ms Lines 1 and 2 in terms of the announcement. For those of you who faint at the notion of American English-only announcements, your home is in the exclusive realm of Line 10, where Ms Line 10 does announcements à la Received Pronunciation.

Technorati Tags: Beijingology, Beijing transit, Beijing Subway, Line 1, Line 2
Sources: Local (with reference to local Subway forums)
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Who This Is For: Line 10 passengers entering or exiting at Sanyuanqiao

Day 4 of the Beijing Olympics, and the news is grim for those doing the Subway: be careful where you enter the system. A lady passenger got quite a shock (and a bang) when a brick from Exit B2 gave way (after the recent rain made it loose). Apparently, this brick must have been stuck to the blue “tent”-ish entrance; a hole was found in the “tent” entrance.

We can’t exactly imagine how this happened; the pic, as you can see, is Exit C2; we can see nary a brick in sight. The only plausible way that this could have happened is if they recently started adding bricks on top of the tent-ish structure.

The city administration authorities, in the meantime, decided to hand the lady CNY 500 in compensation and promised to fix the problem ASAP.

Critics of the Subway system will probably use the refrain tofu project to describe this incident, as Line 10 was, indeed, a “rushed” project in time for the Olympics. (They were, however, in no rush at all to open the line — the original “promised date”, June 30, 2008, eventually was remixed as July 19, 2008.)

Technorati Tags: Beijingology, Beijing transit, Beijing Subway, Line 10
Sources: Local (with reference to The Beijing News)
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Who This Is For: All Subway people

Yes, we know you, O Incoming Visitor With Zero Tolerance Towards Them Dreaded Traffic Snarl-Ups. The Subway guys know you better, which is why, “in the name of the Subway superiors” (they actually put that on the station notices!), the Subway company has decided to extend services.

These affect all Subway lines — no exceptions. Also note that the first train still departs on schedule — only the last trains are dragged in service length. Times struck out indicate the original final service.

Subway Line 1:

• Pingguoyuan eastbound to Sihui East: 22:55 00:44
• Sihui East westbound to Pingguoyuan: 23:15 00:30

Subway Batong Line:

• Tuqiao westbound to Sihui: 22:05 00:57
• Sihui eastbound to Tuqiao: 22:45 01:41

Subway Line 2:

• Clockwise trains from Xizhimen: 22:42 00:09
• Counterclockwise trains from Xizhimen: 22:59 00:29

Subway Line 5:

• Tiantongyuan North southbound to Songjiazhuang: 22:47 00:33
• Songjiazhuang northbound to Tiantongyuan North: 23:10 00:56

Subway Line 8: (Olympic ticket bearers only)

• Beitucheng northbound to South Gate of Forest Park: 22:37 00:39
• South Gate of Forest Park southbound to Beitucheng: 22:26 00:51

Subway Line 10:

• Bagou clockwise to Jinsong: 22:26 00:49
• Jinsong counterclockwise to Bagou: 23:15 01:38

Subway Line 13:

• Xizhimen to Dongzhimen: 22:42 23:58
• Xizhimen to Huoying: 23:45 01:01
• Dongzhimen to Xizhimen: 22:42 23:58
• Dongzhimen to Huoying: 23:45 01:01

Airport Express:

• Dongzhimen to Airport (Terminal 2): 22:30 23:29
• Airport (Terminal 2) to Dongzhimen: 23:10 00:09

This schedule is good through August 24, 2008. It’s on August 25, 2008 that “regular” (a la shortened) services kick into effect — once again…

Technorati Tags: Beijingology, Beijing transit, Beijing Subway, Line 1, Batong Line, Line 2, Line 5, Line 8, Line 10, Line 13, Airport Express
Sources: Local (with reference to Subway station announcement posters)
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Who This Is For: Line 2 passengers who are especially sentimental to older loop line trains

Those old Line 2 trains: square, clackety, and yet so part of the Beijing Subway story. These guys faithfully ran circles around the capital until the arrival of newer rolling stock, known as “The Plaster” (创可贴). Even with the Subway company’s announcement that all trains onboard Line 2 are the new “plasters”, though, recent sightings from the capital’s Subway fans as late as August 10, 2008, still tell of the old trains.

Only four more old train sets are running on Line 2: these are train sets T113, T130, T131 and T132. They’ll probably be disappearing to a Subway depot not near you a tad later on. If you’ve a camera, you might want to capture these trains as they’re going away — very much for good.

And while those new trains may indeed be snazzy, it’ll take Subway diehards (of a rank above your Beijingologist) quite a bit of tearful whining to bid a final, teary farewell to the old trains.

Technorati Tags: Beijingology, Beijing transit, Beijing Subway, Line 2
Sources: Local (with reference to local Subway forums)
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Who This Is For: Line 10 people dying to use their mobile phones while on the move

It looks like the impasse between the Beijing Subway and the Chinese mobile telcos have finally given way. “In the name of the Olympics”, we are made to believe by the Subway company, mobile telephony services have been switched on for users of both networks, after Portable Handset services were switched on sometime ago.

This is good news for China Mobile and China Unicom people: it means that you are now free to chat, text, yak, and even tweet underground. Horray!

News of this impressive breakthrough first came by means of two Beijing Twitter-ers: @chinabuzz and @flypig. Your Beijingologist (@DavidFeng) will be giving the Subway network a good tryout tomorrow morning to see if there are indeed any permanent signals.

For the moment, though, it’s probably time to get ready for your arrival at a now mobile-enabled Line 10 station!

Technorati Tags: Beijingology, Beijing transit, Beijing Subway, Line 10
Sources: Local
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Who This Is For: Batong Line passengers

One more bit of good news for Subway people — especially if you’re doing the Batong Line from Sihui through to Tuqiao. Remember those massive queues at Sihui and Sihui East, as trainloads of Line 1 passengers (6 cars a set) forced their way into the Batong Line (then 4 cars a set)?

You can call that kind of stuff a day now. Forever.

All 24 sets of Batong Line trains have now been converted — remember, it’s now 6 cars a set, no longer 4.

The queues, though, will probably still remain at Sihui and Sihui East until the Batong Line’s gaps are squashed down to 2 minutes and 30 seconds (that’s what Line 1 does these days; Batong’s more a la 3 minutes a train). If ever, that is, though.

Technorati Tags: Beijingology, Beijing transit, Beijing Subway, Batong Line
Sources: Local
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Who This Is For: Line 2 people

The only trains now rolling on Line 2 are the — new trains, the “Plaster”, as we know them. The new trains, 6 cars a set, have 4 doors per car, airconditioning throughout as well as a through walkway, door alarms, info panels, TV screens, and is a heckuvalot more quiet than the older trains that used to roll in their place.

All 38 sets of new Line 2 trains are now with the Subway company. At the same time, more and more new trains are making their way into Line 1.

Technorati Tags: Beijingology, Beijing transit, Beijing Subway, Line 2
Sources: Local
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