At the recent Beijing-Hong kong Economic Co-operation Symposium the municiple government of China promoted a railway project linking Beijing’s urban subway with the capital’s international airport in a hope to draw funding. The planned US$537M, No 13 subway line will be 18.1km long, 1.6km at grade, 12.8km of elevated railway and 3.7km in tunnel. The route, with nine stations, will start at Wangjingxi Station and end at the airport terminal. Construction is planned to start early next year with completion scheduled for December 2004. By 2008, Beijing will have added 100km of urban railway to enlarge its overstretched passenger handling capacity to 48M people a year.
