Subway Challenge: All of Beijing in a Day

Ever wondered what it would be like to ride every meter of the Beijing subway in one day? No, me neither – I’m just about ready to kill someone after three stations on line 1. Fortunately this city holds laowai made of sterner stuff than me, and tomorrow (Wednesday, January 26) two Global Times reporters are gong to attempt to cover the entire network in one frantic day-long underground dash. Not only that, they’re going to race each other to the finish line. “It's actually a real-time race between me and a colleague, Chris Hawke, who I plan to destroy,” explains Alex Taggart.

Are they really going to cover every inch of the Beijing subway? Even that funny little Suzhuang line in the southwest that isn’t connected to the rest of the network?

“Yes, we’re planning to travel every single swath of track, including the newly-built ones and the airport line,” says Taggart. "Technically, the rules say that you just have to cover every station on a train that arrives and departs there – not every piece of track – but my route covers it all anyway.”

The “rules” he refers to are those of the “London Tube Challenge,” a set of guidelines for covering the entire London underground network set by Guinness World Records. The current record for the London system is 18 hours and 35 minutes, set in 2004. Beijing’s network – at least as it stands – is considerably more manageable, and Taggart estimates he can complete his journey in ten hours. And his route will “definitely include the Suzhuang line at some point – I’m looking forward to finding out what wonders lie out there.”

After some quick calculations, we concluded Taggart's estimate of ten hours to cover the entire network is a tad ambitious. According to our handy subway ap, the Beijing subway requires 539 minutes - or just under nine hours - of travel time to cover every part of the network. Factoring in the need to backtrack and/or travel between lines, we estimate 12-13 hours as an absolute minimum.

Apart from “destroying his colleague,” Taggart says the subway dash is intended to “bring attention to the fact that for less than the price of a jianbing, it's possible to navigate the whole of Beijing and beyond (336 km of track) in a day, with a good few hours to spare if my calculations are correct. In a taxi, the same journey would be super-slow, cost at least 1,042 kuai (or 297.7 jianbings), and leave Beijing covered in nasty pollution.”

Taggart is being coy about the exact route he’s taking, but he was prepared to say that his planned starting point is “definitely nowhere near where I live, which means getting up at some ridiculous time.” He adds that he’ll be boarding his first train at 5.30am, “At which point an independent adjudicator will start a timer.”

To keep up with all the action, follow Taggart’s journey on twitter: @AlexSTaggart.