Officials in Beijing have laid out plans to continue their program of rapid expansion of the Chinese capital’s metro system in response to growing traffic.
China’s Xinhua News Agency reports that Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun outlined plans to begin construction of four new metro lines in 2015 in his public works report to the annual meeting of the municipal legislature on January 23rd.
Wang said that the city would consider using public-private partnerships to finance construction of the new lines in order to reduce the government’s debt burden.
In addition to beginning work on the four new lines, the city also plans to open extensions of two existing lines this year.
The continued expansion comes on the heels of the opening of four subway lines totaling 62 km in length on December 28th, bringing total route length to 527 km. The openings coincided with a fare hike and restructuring that introduced distance-based fares to the system.
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Plans call for the metro system to encompass 1,000 km of routes by 2020. It currently carries 10 million passengers per day.
This article originally appeared in Next City.
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