Talking Travel: Choose-Your-Own Subway Temperature, a Universal Metro Card, and Share Bike Woes

Talking Travel: your roundup of Beijing's latest transportation-related news.

Line 6 train carriages installed with two temperature settings

As of last week, all the trains on Line 6 began providing two separate air-conditioning temperature settings: strong (强冷 qiáng lěng) in carriages 1-16 and weak (弱冷 ruò lěng) in carriages 17-32. The two temperatures – approximately 25 and 27 degrees Celsius respectively – are designed to allow passengers to choose their optimum temperature and put an end to complaints about the air either being too hot or too cold, according to Xinhua News.

Line 6 was built in 2012, and traverses several districts including Shijingshan in the west and Tongzhou in the southeast, carrying 1.2 million passengers annually. Line 7 is expected to be the next trial line to apply the same temperature settings, according to the report.

One metro card to cover 260 cities in China

The Beijing traffic authority has pledged to boost its public transit card system to an additional 15 locations, to cover a total of 260 cities by the end of the year, as reported by China.org. That means that holders of Beijing's Yikatong card will now be able to use it on even more buses and subways across the country, as well as for a variety of other local services. Some of the big cities that currently allow use of the Beijing travel card are Shijiazhuang in Hebei, Hefei in Anhui, and Wuhan in Hubei.

Shared bikes stagnate in Beijing

Seven hundred thousand of Beijing's shared bikes have not been used in the past five months, equalling a whopping 37 percent of the total registered bikes in the city. In comparison, only 43 percent are used on a weekly basis, according to Jinritoutiao.

Not surprisingly, the stagnation in use has been sparked somewhat by rising costs for riders and growing mistrust in the companies behind the bikes. The survivors of the fiercely competitive shared bike industry, including Ofo and Mobike, are now struggling to make profits after their initial investments, and have jacked up prices to make up for the shortfall.

Beijing new airport subway line test runs

Beijing's new self-driving airport subway line made its first trial run on Jun 15, according to CNR. The line, which will have a capacity of close to 450 people, will traverse 41km from Caoqiao to the new Daxing International Airport, with an additional stop at Cigezhuang.

Using the new autopilot system, the trains will reach 160km/h and take only 19 minutes to travel the three stops. The line is due to go into operation at the end of September to coincide with the opening of the new airport.

READ: A Sneak Peek at the World's Soon-to-Be Biggest Airport

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Email: kuang@thebeijinger.com
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Photos: Xinhua News, bmac, Jinritoutiao, CGTN