The Guardian ran a longish piece on the Beijing subway by Tania Branigan. Here are some facts:

It is late summer and the carriages are crammed, but air conditioning keeps it cool, blowing wafts of recently applied deodorant across the crowd.

Who in China, besides foreigners, wears deodorant? According to Boyfriend, one of his coworkers once told him that deodorant smelled funny. Body odor and halitosis are facts of life here. I do not know about this mythical subway carriage on which Branigan had the good fortune to ride, because the subway stinks and everyone knows it.

“The subway is the pride of Beijing. It’s the only reason to live in this city,” says Liu Jinchang, a sales director, over one shoulder, since he does not have room to turn. His tone is jokey, his enthusiasm genuine: he has a car but prefers to commute this way because it is faster and easier than driving.

The subway sucks. You are forced to walk miles to a station, more miles to the subway platform, even more miles to transfer to another line, and then miles again when you exit to your station to your final destination. Sure, it’s mostly pretty clean and new and well-run. But subways are supposed to be convenient; the Beijing subway is rarely ever super convenient. The only convenience it offers over driving a car or taking the bus is that it avoids any possibility of traffic congestion, but all of those extra miles you are forced to cover by foot negates this convenience. All that time you might be stuck in traffic is the same amount of time you spend walking to and from the subway. So unless you are going all the way across town between places with a subway station, the Beijing subway actually makes you strongly consider your other transportation options. It sucks. If it’s the pride of Beijing, then Beijing must be a terrible place.

In the next six and a half years, extensions to the Beijing subway will cover more ground than the entire London Underground network has in a century and a half.

Development! But let’s not pretend that a larger system will make the city any better. There’s still this to contend with:

But Jin Xue, an expert on China’s urban development at Aalborg University, is concerned by the growing tendency for cities to sprawl outwards.

“Historically, the urban density of Chinese cities was really high,” she said. “In recent years, [in places], it has been decreasing … Compact and high density cities should still be pursued, not just to preserve farmland, but to reduce traffic volumes.”

Better planning, such as seeking to bring homes and workplaces closer, could reduce long commutes and cut congestion.

I just wish someone in China felt the same way.