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.
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“In a time of confusion and rapid change like the present, when terms are continually turning inside out and the names of things hardly keep their meaning from day to day, it’s not possible to write two honest paragraphs without stopping to take crossbearings on every one of the abstractions that were so well ranged in ornate marble niches in the minds of our fathers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn’t matter so much as it seemed to do—it’s not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn’t matter so much.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Sometimes people who are never alone are the loneliest, don’t you think so?”
—A.I. (Albert Isaac)
“Our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws, not of men.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous, event of our generation.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)