Cities with most impressive transport networks?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by muppet

I think the most impressive is Chengdu, building 670km / 412 miles in 15 years (27 miles each year).

This is the equivalent to planning, building and opening the London's tunneled sections of the Elizabeth Line each year (read: the main part that actually goes through the city, not the suburbs that was overland and mostly already built). The Elizabeth line took 14 years to build and 7 years to plan.


by comparison in the same 15 year timeframe:

Shanghai built 400km / 250 miles = 16.7miles per year

Beijing 505km / 314 miles = 21 miles per year


Other timescales

Zhengzhou built 450km / 280 miles in 12 years = 23 miles per year

Hangzhou 516km / 321 miles in 13 years = 25 miles per year


All of these new additions bigger than London or NYC.

Many studies have been found on how they're able to build so quickly, and the main takeaway is that there's far less middlemen - legislation, studies, redesigns -despite better engineering, deeper tunneling, larger and prettier stations, and just as much history to dig through. Also it's largely standardised and automated to every system across the country, so less bespoke designs needed, and new specialists or contractors to hire. Notably far less labour needed too, thanks to the automated construction.

I'm guessing that Chinese systems like Beijing and Shanghai have longer lengths than New York or London because they have to cover larger areas in those cities. Beijing has the same number of stations as New York, despite having over 2x the system length. Beijing also has twice the population of New York and over 20x the land area.

The per capita ridership of Beijing's system also appears to be much lower than New York's. According to the Wikipedia data, New York City had roughly 230 rides per resident in 2024 compared to Beijing's 165 rides per resident.

Third, the Wikipedia page separates the Staten Island Railway from the NYC Transit system for some reason, so technically there are 262 miles of rapid transit rail within New York City, not 248. (If you add the PATH it increases to about 278, but most of the PATH's system is outside of New York City.)