I recently had a great conversation about transit development in China with my PKU colleague, Zhang Chun. She’s written a lot about the subject, including for a recent World Bank project on transit accessibility of the urban poor. In addition to transit, Zhang Chun and I spoke about broader gender issues in Beijing’s development.
So's to start: the first two lines of the Beijing Metro---Lines 1 (an east-west line) and 2 (a circular line that goes around the Forbidden City---were originally developed, starting in in 1969, for the exclusive use of the People’s Liberation Army. They were only made public in 1980 and expanded in 2004. The development of roads was under the central Ministry of Roads, while subways was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Rail, which no longer exists. (It's been broken into Ministry of Transport, which covers safety and regulation; the State Railways Administration, which does inspection; and China Railway Corporation, which oversees construction and management. As for funding, municipalities must fully fund and manage subway systems by themselves. (The case of Beijing is a little different, as it's also the national capital, giving it access to a few more resources and priorities than other cities might get).
It was only from 2003 that the Beijing authorities thought to develop subway transit with greater seriousness. They did this largely because they realized the folly of what they had been doing: Beijing's local automotive industry had long put a choke hold on the city's planning, so roads were prioritized over mass transit (and rail) lines, leading to massive traffic congestion and air pollution. What really spurred the authorities on to change things, of course, was the public relations surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Here's a great gif showing the evolution of Beijing's subway system:
So owing to these weird administrative snafus, and also the relative recentness of the subway's development, Beijing’s bus system is actually more extensive, more prolific, cheaper, and more used for mass transit. Both the bus and subway systems are heavily subsidized in Beijing. The Beijing subway system costs only two yuan to get anywhere within it, whereas other cities have fare systems that are priced according to how far and which districts you travel. (Guangzhou can go as high as 10 or 15 yuan for a ride).
The buses are managed in a very interesting way: there’s usually a male driver and a female conductor who collects tickets and keeps folks in the bus in line. In fact, it is the conductor’s responsibility to find a seat for pregnant women, old people, or the infirm (subways also put 'people with children' in this category)---and if these people are unable to find a seat and something happens to them, the conductor is liable. In the subway, on the other hand, there are signs that tell people to vacate certain seats for “those in need,” including the old, pregnant, with children, or infirm, but in practice that is not enforced and depends on how generous straphangers are feeling. This lack of certain provision makes it a little difficult for “those in need.”
This provision is among the biggest issues for women’s access, as discussed in my earlier post on transit access. Women with children usually have to carry their carriages down stairs, because only the newest stations and transit hubs (those that connect a few lines) will have elevators. Because of this, many women simply hold their children in their arms instead of bringing a whole carriage. (Plus carrying a carriage or bassinet in a crowded Beijing subway can be pretty unwieldy and tough. Not to mention, prams or strollers are actually a pretty recent arrival in China; parents have long preferred to hold their children in their arms).
Shanghai and Hong Kong have better transfer systems within subways (i.e. between different lines at transit hubs), which makes it easier to bring a bassinet or child across a system. Beijing, however, has been less good at this, making the subways in Beijing less accessible to the non-young. It’s been built into the urban planning building code, which is fairly strict in Beijing, that a subway station entrance cannot be kept close to any building, which makes it that much more difficult to access transit. This was owed to the earlier development of underground utilities such as pipes and electric wiring.
On the related note of women's travel patterns, China has mandated maternity leave of four months. And yet, there is no daycare provision until a child is 2.5 years old. Hence, between four months and 2.5 years, the child has minimal institutional support and the mother has to figure out how to take care of hir while the mother is working. Double income families were often the norm among Chinese couples, particularly before 2000, when the one-child policy was relaxed in urban areas. But the income of one person was insufficient to pay for a nanny while the mother worked (a nanny cost almost the mother’s salary). So instead, many women have simply been staying home as housewives instead of returning to their jobs after giving birth, while others keep young children with grandparents as babysitters. This lifestyle change altered transit patterns, to say nothing of economic and physical mobility.
In the 1990s, the worker welfare system was ‘reformed’ and essentially stopped nationally, with worker-provided public housing being terminated. (Prior to that they were heavily subsidized, with public housing residents paying as little as 21 yuan per month). But less than 1% of government employees have public housing, and more recently, a few companies have been providing their workers with 13,000 yuan to simply purchase their own houses. As the housing market has been privatized, many are forced to live farther and farther away from their places of work, given that central business district and central city housing prices have gotten so high.
This has been maybe the greatest folly of Beijing's urbanization, even with its emphasis on mass transit development: markets are increasing space and distance between buildings and neighborhoods, and even between uses (e.g. home and work). So even though density remains pretty high (compared with the US, for example), sprawl is still going pretty wild. And because, as the capital, Beijing serves as a model for the rest of the country, the tenets of its growth are affecting planning patterns elsewhere in the country. Without some fresher thinking, China's urbanizing billion---including its 500 million women---will have a number of difficulties adjusting to city life.
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