The Beijing metro could overtake the London underground as the world's longest subway network by 2020, under a proposal submitted by urban planners.
In an attempt to ease the dire traffic congestion and pollution that plague the Chinese capital, the planners want the subway network to be expanded almost fivefold from its current length of 72 miles.
But the plans are subject to approval by the government, which for many years put more of a priority on maintaining an "underground city" of bomb shelters and tunnels designed to help the capital withstand nuclear attack.
Beijing's four metro lines carry 1.5 million people a day, compared with the 11 lines on the London underground, which carry 3 million. The Chinese capital has started work on three more lines and 60 miles of track, which will enter service in time for the 2008 Olympic games.
According to the China Daily yesterday, municipal planners propose adding a line a year until 2020, which would make the network 349 miles long, nearly 100 miles longer than the London underground.
The Beijing Municipal Institute of City Planning and Design wants to build six underground roads to ease pressure caused by a doubling of traffic in five years. But transport officials said subways were safer and more cost effective. "It will cost much more and is more difficult in terms of technology to build underground highways instead of metro lines," Duan Liren, the head of the research institute of traffic management in Beijing, said at a weekend conference, according to Xinhua news agency.
The underground city was built on the orders of Mao Zedong between 1969 and 1979 to house millions of people in the event of a nuclear or chemical attack. Few statistics have been released about the extent of the network, but tourist guides at one section that is open to the public say the tunnels stretch to the Western Hills and include space for clinics, hairdressers, shops, theatres and schools.