Kunming Metro, Any Insight?

http://www.worldofnonging.com/2013/11/kunming-in-deep-metro-woes/

So, anyone have any insight into this project? Will it ever be finished, will Beijing bail Kunming out?

Heck, will Beijing bail any other interior city out if they end up underwater due to all these infrastructure improvements they can never pay for?

I laughed when I first heard Kunming was getting a metro. The city is not that large. I take the bus to work and I live out the outskirts of the city -- it takes me 20 minutes on the bus and probably another 15 minutes or so walking and waiting. If I lived on the outskirts of Beijing I'd be looking at a 2 hour+ commute, and that's utilizing the subway. This Kunming subway will probably not help any with my commute, but it will make it easier for people to live outside of the already congested city center, make buying property in the suburbs, where property prices are still reasonable, a viable option (without a subway, would anyone even consider buying a house outside of Beijing's 5th ring road? I mean, not to be all, yay, urban sprawl, but what else can people do?), and cut down on the number of cars on the road, which should help keep Kunming's pollution in check.

Subways are public works projects and they aren't designed to make money. Is the cost worth the gain for a smaller city? Well, these cities aren't going to be smallish forever and I think it is wise for cities like Hangzhou and Kunming and Harbin to look ahead and build their metros now.

I can't speak to the speed or the cost of construction really, but I do know that Kunming has notorious problems with corruption in the transportation department and I don't think whether or not the subway is a good idea is really the issue, the issue is how are funds being allocated and is the project as a whole being conducted in such a way as to improve the city, or to line certain people's wallets?

Harbin's is finally open. The first line anyway. It'll be about 9 years before the whole thing is finished. It's made things a lot easier especially in winter.

There's a few open in Hangzhou, with a few others under construction.

Quite frankly my experience mirrors TLD: in most instances taking a bus is more convenient.

However, Taipei has done a magnificent job with their MRT, and they finally opened another line last week.

 

Two things you said stuck out TLD, not trying to be funny, but isn't this China in a nutshell?

1) these cities aren't going to be smallish forever

2) I do know that Kunming has notorious problems with corruption

Qingdao is almost ready to open up in about half a year. The first line to begin running is the Beijing sponsored "Train Station to Airport" line. Thankfully, it passes close to our house. This will kill taxi runs.

Traffic isn't Beijing bad, but there are moments. I wonder if it will be like Kunming where people won't give up their car. The buses always seem crowded so I'm sure our subways will be somewhat busy. He even says:

Smoke-spewing buses groan with the weight of their human load and riders have to stand for hours to arrive at their destinations.

Sounds like a need for underground mass transit to me. I mean if they were half empty, then the new subway would be redundant. Regarding the article originally quoted, the writer needs to relearn math and common sense. Sure it's not too busy now, and he quoted an assuming peak capacity at 48%. Going from 3 to 11 lines has a tendancy of increasing costs. No idea which ones were added and how much mileage was initially slated.

With Kunming’s annual revenue around 37,8 billion yuan (€ 4,7 billion), the folks at Moneyweek calculated that Kunming has incurred eight years of debt for just building a metro. Ticket prices won’t alleviate the financial pain: at 2-5 yuan (€ 0,25-0,62) a ticket and a very optimistic average daily ridership of 48% (Beijing), it will take 759 years to pay back the construction cost, not to mention the undoubtedly sky-high operating and maintenance costs. Kunming may be growing quickly, but it is unclear whether the local government isn’t digging its own grave.

Not written by a real journalist. Sounds more like an opinion letter to the editor or a high school project

My experience with Beijing suggests to me that people who would not give up their car for a bus will for a subway. Subways will always be faster than a bus *if* you have a line from where you live to where you want to go. The subway isn't helping me in Kunming right now because there's only one line and it goes, as one of the articles said, from nowhere to the middle of nowhere. Otherwise, the subway will *always* get you there faster. And, if you want to have effective anti-car policies, like rotating driving days, you have to have an infrastructure capable of providing an alternative. Expecting everyone to bike it is not an answer.

I also suspect that the subway does not have the middle/lower class public transportation stigma that the bus does, which is another reason why people will, to a degree, give up their cars for the subway. The article makes a big deal about how the Beijing subway is so cheap at only ".40 cents" but what they don't mention is that the subway is 5x the cost of the bus. One trip on the BJ subway is 2rmb, whereas the bus, if you have a bus card, is 4 jiao. If you take the subway to and from work, that's 4rmb a day, 20rmb a month. When you're on a migrant worker salary, you take the bus. What that means is that the riffraff tends not to regularly ride the subway and the middle and upper middle classes can take the subway without feeling like their status is threatened. When migrant workers or outsiders do get on the subway, it is simply an opportunity to sneer at their ignorance when they block the doors with their big-ass luggage -- win, win!

I don't have any insight but I wish they would hurry the f up.

The area where I live in a nightmare as a result of the metro.

Well they are digging up the whole of Xiamen for the same reason and it is driving everyone crazy here too.

Changsha too. The first line (a very useful one) is finished and will open before the end of the year.

Dalian too. Mind you, the city needs a metro, but the project has already gone over budget, missed dealines, cost lives and of course been a royal pain in the butt in terms of construction woes.
One thing that gets me is the ambitious scale of these projects. We're not talking one or two cross-town lines, but plans for entire systems of 8 or more lines. No wonder they can't manage these projects, they're trying to do too much at once

I'm getting this feeling that 8 lines at once is too much for any city. They should focus on digging one or two lines, or at least waiting until Beijing and Shanghai finish their networks so that equipment, engineers and labor can be transferred over on the cheap.

As the author of the article, I'm mainly trying to argue what the Economist already said: Kunming's better off with an overground mass-transit system such as a BRT than with an expensive underground option which is

- unsafe (Kunming's built on swamp land);
- extremely expensive (8 annual city revenue equivalents for just construction is not a debt to be sniffed at);
- invasive (pollution levels have doubled, streets are in chaos, construction noise continues all night);
- useless (perpetuates the idea that the car is the way to go and everything else should go underground).

I don't say anywhere that the cost is not in proportion to the size of the project (the per-kilometre price largely corresponds what Shanghai is paying), but the question is rather whether Kunming can afford it, and whether it really needs 8 underground lines.

And I'd like to react to these slightly off-topic points, because Day Dreamer seems to use them to question the validity of my points.

Not written by a real journalist? Maybe. Journalist is not a protected title. How do you define one? I am not an accredited journalist, but the folks at the Daily Mail are.

Math not right? I don't see where the math is wrong. I looked up figures and calculated results. Of course, city revenue may go up or down, but at the time of speaking, this is what it'll cost. Hardly any subway system pays for itself, I know, but I just wanted to put into perspective how expensive subways really are. The optimistic Beijing ridership rate of 48% will never be achieved in Kunming, which is in many ways way behind the capital.

I'll include some of the points in an updated version of my high school project.

I can't remember ever hearing about any massive public project not costing way too much and taking way too long due to graft etc anywhere, ever. I suppose that the government is a good client since they have a lot of money and you have power over them even if you mess up because they will get in trouble with the public if it's not super safe
My other thoughts on this are

1) The problem in Chinese cities isn't the infrastructure in itself (although it isn't often great) the real issue is that there are something like 20 times as many cars as there were 10 years ago.
2) How much of a credit crunch is China going to have down the line, I think it will make the Western ones look tame, I agree with the idea of public projects to keep the economy going when it slows down, but useful ones that are well thought out

Wow - that map of all the Kunming lines looks more extensive than the Hong Kong MTR.

Beautiful Dongguan has a lot of holes in the ground for digging one here.  I'm not sure how long until the first one opens.

As the author of the article, I'm mainly trying to argue what the Economist already said: Kunming's better off with an overground mass-transit system such as a BRT than with an expensive underground option which is

- unsafe (Kunming's built on swamp land);
- extremely expensive (8 annual city revenue equivalents for just construction is not a debt to be sniffed at);
- invasive (pollution levels have doubled, streets are in chaos, construction noise continues all night);
- useless (perpetuates the idea that the car is the way to go and everything else should go underground).

I don't say anywhere that the cost is not in proportion to the size of the project (the per-kilometre price largely corresponds what Shanghai is paying), but the question is rather whether Kunming can afford it, and whether it really needs 8 underground lines.

And I'd like to react to these slightly off-topic points, because Day Dreamer seems to use them to question the validity of my points.

Not written by a real journalist? Maybe. Journalist is not a protected title. How do you define one? I am not an accredited journalist, but the folks at the Daily Mail are.

Math not right? I don't see where the math is wrong. I looked up figures and calculated results. Of course, city revenue may go up or down, but at the time of speaking, this is what it'll cost. Hardly any subway system pays for itself, I know, but I just wanted to put into perspective how expensive subways really are. The optimistic Beijing ridership rate of 48% will never be achieved in Kunming, which is in many ways way behind the capital.

I'll include some of the points in an updated version of my high school project.

Let me see if I understand this, I never finished high school so I ain't too brite:

- your article addressed what another paper said. This other magazine is notorious for it's anti-Communist views
- facts are given through random and unjustified comparisons
- some information is purely anecdotal
- most of it is speculative

On the whole, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Just like I have the freedom to express my point of view. Don't get your shorts up in a knot because I punched holes through your magnus opus. When I write, I anticipate differing points of view.

Please explain how what I wrote was off-topic? I quoted YOU and your article. Thou I have visited Kunming I can't say I know it well enough to postulate any theories. However I can point out that comparing ridership to Beijing's is preposterous. I have no clue as to what parts of the city the subway is serving nor do I know how ridership will fare. Two completely different situations. Also comparing K's cost index to Shanghai is utterly misleading.

How much of this project is federally backed? This removes the need for a ROI  (I honestly don't know, it could be 0 or 100%, if you know, please inform)
How much of this project is/was the federal gov't pushing? Same response

My hometown is going through a similar boondoggle; not the subway itself, but the involvement of the 3 levels of gov't, changes in those gov'ts, starts and stops, etc. They started talking about this expansion over 2 decades ago. An issue was the similar argument of are we "better off with an overground mass-transit system such as a BRT than with an expensive underground option?"

Your paper lacked journalistic merit, it was a nice high school report. Don't pass it off as scripture