Rapid transit in the People's Republic of China encompasses a broad range of urban and suburban electric passenger rail mass transit systems including subway, light rail, tram and even maglev. Some classifications also include non-rail bus rapid transport. Several Chinese cities had urban electrical tramways in the early 20th century, which were dismantled in the 1950s. Nanjing had an urban railway from 1907 to 1958. The first subway in China was built in Beijing in 1969. The Tianjin Metro followed in 1984. China’s largest urban metro system is located in Shanghai which is also the longest network in the world, where the first metro line opened in 1995. Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated. From 2009 to 2015, China plans to build 87 mass transit rail lines, totaling 2,495 km, in 25 cities at the cost of ¥988.6 billion. As of 2012, China averages 270km of new rapid transit mileage. Hong Kong’s MTR was developed autonomously by the Hong Kong Colonial Government. The MTR now has investment and management stakes in the rapid transit systems of several mainland Chinese cities.
Famous quotes containing the words rapid, transit, people, republic and/or china:
“But parents can be understanding and accept the more difficult stages as necessary times of growth for the child. Parents can appreciate the fact that these phases are not easy for the child to live through either; rapid growth times are hard on a child. Perhaps it’s a small comfort to know that the harder-to-live-with stages do alternate with the calmer times,so parents can count on getting periodic breaks.”
—Saf Lerman (20th century)
“My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy ... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.”
—William Lamb Melbourne, 2nd Viscount (1779–1848)
“Real good breeding, as the people have it here, is one of the finest things now going in the world. The careful avoidance of all discussion, the swift hopping from topic to topic, does not agree with me; but the graceful style they do it with is beyond that of minuets!”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“It all ended with the circuslike whump of a monstrous box on the ear with which I knocked down the traitress who rolled up in a ball where she had collapsed, her eyes glistening at me through her spread fingers—all in all quite flattered, I think. Automatically, I searched for something to throw at her, saw the china sugar bowl I had given her for Easter, took the thing under my arm and went out, slamming the door.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)