Beijing’s plan to hike subway fares creates new set of transit woes

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There aren't many other deals like it: for 37 cents, you can take an all-you-can ride tour of the 465 kilometres that make up the sprawling Beijing subway system. That's roughly the driving distance from Toronto to Ottawa, making it one of the longest in the world and, Chinese officials says, the busiest, with 11-million riders on peak days.

But cheap fares, China has discovered, don't come free, and Beijing has now had enough. Last year it spent $3.66-billion to subsidize 3.2-billion passengers; the real cost of a ticket was three times its face value. Beijing now spends more on cheap subway tickets than it does on health care.

That all changes on December 28. After years of sometimes-angry debate, the city will raise subway fares from two renminbi to a base level of three, and up from there on a sliding scale based on distance. Bus fares will also suck much more from riders' pockets than before, although the city is offering discounts to frequent riders.

The change was, as might be expected, met with grumbling.

But it's not the last apple cart the Chinese capital will have to overturn as it seeks to bring order to a chaotic urban landscape dashed into being during the giddy years of economic growth. At peak hours, Beijing's subway systems now function at nearly 150 per cent capacity. Its snarled roads rank among the world's top 10 most jammed, and the solutions – which include a near-1,000 kilometre seventh ring road – offer little hope of better efficiency. Its airport is the world's most delayed.

And its people are, at least according to outsiders, surly as a result: TripAdvisor users have voted Beijing the world's second-worst for taxi service and friendly locals.

Earlier this year Beijing mayor Wang Anshun warned that his city is plagued "by an urban disease" that includes too many cars, too much smog and, according to government officials, too many people. Planners once set 18-million as a 2020 population cap; earlier this year, statisticians said Beijing now counts 21.15-million residents, barely smaller than Australia.

Halting the stampede to the capital has become one of Mr. Wang's chief goals. "To resolutely control the population's excessive growth is the key to solving multiple problems, such as traffic and environmental problems," he said a year ago.

Yet even if he can succeed in that – and it's not at all clear he can – it will do little to fix existing problems. Among the goals of raising subway fares is to ease pressures on the system, and the linebacker efforts it takes to board at rush hour. But if people are booted from the subway, where will they go?

"I think many ordinary people will give up on the subway and switch to buses. But buses cause traffic jams. To solve traffic problems, I think they're going to have to reduce the subway price again," said Zhang, a 22-year-old who does nursing work and gave only her last name. She makes 1,000 RMB a month, and is worried about the fare hike. "My salary is so small, how will I have enough money for the subway?" she said.

Driving people onto cars and belching diesel buses also does little to attack smog – and, adding to the box commuters find themselves in, the roads are at risk of becoming a less friendly alternative. After booting half the cars off streets to ensure blue skies for APEC meetings earlier in the month, city planners are now considering permanently enforcing odd-even number plate restrictions.

All of which means Beijing is careening between painful solutions. China's rocket ride of economic growth has often been called a miracle. But it may take another miracle to untangle the mess it has made.