Proposal for construction of the longest subway in Beijing has passed government examination and appraisal and will be built within the year.

The Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning has announced that the No.6 subway will run from east to west across the north of the city for 41.74 km which will run parallel with the existing No.1 line.

It will be the longest of the kind in Beijing to be built so far, said the commission.

The No. 6 line is designed to have 28 stations, including 13 interchange stations. The line will run from Wulu area in Haidian District of western Beijing, to Dongxiaoying, Tongzhou in the east.

It is expected to enormously alleviate pressure on the existing east-west transport routes in the Chinese capital, industry observers said.

Work will also start within the year on five other subway lines: the No. 8 and 9 lines, the second phase of the No. 10 line, and the Yizhuang and Daxing lines. The six new lines will have a total length of 152 kilometers and will be completed by 2012.

Beijing has five subway lines in operation, with a total length of 142 kilometers.

"The city aims to raise the proportion of citizens choosing public transport from the current 30 percent to 45 percent by 2015, said the commission's Zhou Nansen.

The municipal government of Beijing has been making painstaking efforts to boost public transport, ease road congestion and improve air quality ahead of the Olympics.

To encourage more people to use mass transit for travels, the city government on Oct. 7 introduced a new subway pricing system under which subway fares are cut by about 30 percent.

Now a single-journey ticket costs just two yuan (US$27 cents), no matter how long one travels and how many times one transfers between lines.

(Xinhua News Agency October 31, 2007)