More and more second- and third-tier cities are joining the subway construction wave.

       The recent construction plan for Nantong's urban rapid rail transit was recently approved by the state, making it China's 37th approved city for subway construction.

       After Nantong, will more medium-sized cities join the subway construction wave? The answer is yes.

       Due to expensive construction and operating costs, third-tier cities will need to be more cautious about building subways in the future.

       37 cities connected to subways

       Last May, the State Council decided to cancel and delegate a batch of administrative approval items, delegating the approval authority for urban rail transit projects to provincial investment authorities. That is, the engineering feasibility report for a single line only needs to be approved by the provincial development and reform commission where it is located, which means Nantong's subway is very close to official construction.

       According to the plan, Nantong's long-term rail transit network consists of 4 urban lines and 4 suburban lines, with a total length of about 324 kilometers, including 170.8 kilometers of urban lines and 153.2 kilometers of suburban lines. The recently approved near-term construction includes two backbone lines: Phase I of Line 1 and Phase I of Line 2, with a total length of 59.55 kilometers, 41 stations, and a total investment of 39.713 billion yuan.

       The 37 subway cities include the 4 municipalities directly under the central government: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing; 5 cities with independent planning status: Shenzhen, Xiamen, Ningbo, Qingdao, and Dalian; most provincial capitals (excluding some smaller provincial capitals); and cities with relatively large economic and population scales such as Suzhou, Dongguan, Wuxi, Changzhou, Xuzhou, and Nantong.

       By province, Jiangsu, currently the second-largest economy, has the most cities connected to subways, with 6: Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Xuzhou, and Nantong; Guangdong follows with 4: Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, and Dongguan; Zhejiang, Shandong, Fujian, and Liaoning each have 2, all being combinations of "provincial capital + city with independent planning status."

       Why does Guangdong, the largest economy, lag behind Jiangsu?

       Peng Peng, deputy director of the Guangdong Academy of Comprehensive Reform and Development, told Yicai Daily that this is related to the differences in economic development models between the two provinces. In Guangdong, cities like Zhongshan and Huizhou have economic development spread across various towns and villages, with small contiguous urban areas, making them unsuitable for subway construction. Second, many cities in Jiangsu, including Xuzhou and Nantong, already had large urban areas, while many prefecture-level cities in Guangdong developed from county towns and cannot compare with Jiangsu.

       In addition, Jiangsu's more balanced economic development is also an important reason. Although Jiangsu's leading cities Nanjing and Suzhou are not as large as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Jiangsu's medium-sized cities such as Wuxi, Changzhou, and Nantong are relatively balanced in development. In contrast, Guangdong's economic development is mainly concentrated in the Pearl River Delta, where just four cities—Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, and Dongguan—account for nearly 70% of the province's total, while other cities are clearly underdeveloped.

Shandong, the third-largest economy after Guangdong and Jiangsu, has only 2 subway cities, far fewer than Guangdong and Jiangsu. Although Shandong's economy has developed rapidly in recent years, as a major agricultural and industrial province, its urbanization rate is currently only 53.6%, barely on par with the national average. Apart from Jinan and Qingdao, other cities in the province are not large and are still some distance from building subways.

However, if calculated by existing operating rail lines, Jiangsu does not rank high.

       According to statistics from the China Association of Metros, by the end of 2013, 19 cities nationwide had opened a total of 2,746 kilometers of urban rail transit. Among them, subways accounted for 2,073 kilometers, or 75.5%; light rail accounted for 233 kilometers, or 8.5%.

       Among them, Beijing topped the list with 17 lines, followed by Shanghai with 16 lines. Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Foshan in Guangdong had a total of 15 lines. Nanjing and Suzhou in Jiangsu had 5 lines in operation. Because Jiangsu's cities started relatively late, the total number of operating lines is far less than Guangdong's.

       How high is the cost of subways?

       Among prefecture-level cities of similar population size, Nantong is the first approved to build rail transit.

       Currently, cities including Luoyang, Baotou, and Yantai are actively preparing for rail transit construction. Among them, Luoyang, Henan's second-largest city, is making steady progress.

       A relevant person from the Luoyang Rail Transit Office told our reporter on the 21st that Luoyang's rail transit plan was submitted to the National Development and Reform Commission after last year's National Day holiday, and various supporting special plans are being prepared. If all goes well, the plan is expected to be approved within the year. By then, Luoyang will become the first prefecture-level city in the central and western regions, outside municipalities and provincial capitals, to build a subway.

       Kong Lingbin, a senior engineer at the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, analyzed for our newspaper that more and more cities will definitely build subways. The scale of rail transit in these cities will be much smaller than in first-tier cities, but building two or three lines is still appropriate.

       What kind of city is suitable for building subways?

       The standard currently used is still the 2003 "Notice of the State Council on Strengthening the Management of Urban Rapid Rail Transit Construction," which states that cities applying to develop subways should have an urban population of over 3 million, a general local fiscal budget revenue of over 10 billion yuan, a GDP of over 100 billion yuan, and a planned line passenger flow of over 30,000 passengers per hour in one direction during peak periods.

       In the past, according to GDP and fiscal revenue indicators, only first-tier cities and a few provincial capitals could meet the standards. But now many ordinary prefecture-level cities have exceeded the existing standards. Therefore, it is necessary to revise the standards.

       Since the second half of last year, there have been reports that the state is revising and formulating new standards. But so far, the new standards have not been issued.

       Several experts analyzed for our newspaper that compared with indicators such as GDP and fiscal revenue, population size and line passenger flow are more important.

       Hu Xiaodeng, a counselor of the Guizhou Provincial Government and director of the Urban Economy Research Institute of the Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences, believes that although some provincial capitals in the central and western regions, such as Guiyang and Lanzhou, have small total GDP, as provincial capitals and transportation hubs with large urban areas and great development space, it is necessary for these cities to build subways.

       On the contrary, although some ordinary prefecture-level cities in the east have relatively large economic aggregates, their central urban areas are small, and many industries and populations are in subordinate counties and towns, so building subways is relatively unnecessary.

       Kong Lingbin said that rail transit is hugely expensive. Some long and narrow cities, although small in population and urban scale, have relatively large traffic demand, and building one or two lines is very necessary. "For these cities, how to reduce construction costs is very important."

       Zhang Jiangyu, deputy director of the Planning and Research Center of the Comprehensive Transportation Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, predicted last year that from 2013 to 2018, 37 cities will build 3,127 kilometers of rail transit, with an estimated total investment of 1.86 trillion yuan, including 746.5 billion yuan of capital funds and 1.11 trillion yuan of financing. The average annual investment required is 310 billion yuan.

       Ding Changfa, an associate professor in the Department of Economics at Xiamen University, analyzed for Yicai Daily that some medium-sized cities, in order to launch subways, will artificially "inflate" data such as line passenger flow. But in fact, many third- and fourth-tier cities, due to their limited radiation and attraction to surrounding areas, are not increasing in population but rather losing population to first- and second-tier cities.

       Compared with expensive subways, some third- and fourth-tier cities can consider building light rail, trams, or BRT (bus rapid transit) systems, and do not necessarily have to build subways.

       Among various rail transit modes, subways have the highest cost. In terms of cost per kilometer, trams cost about 20 million yuan, light rail costs 200 million yuan, and subways cost 500 million yuan, while some cities have even higher costs: Lanzhou's average cost is about 746 million yuan per kilometer, and Shenzhen's Phase III subway costs 900 million yuan per kilometer.

(Note: This article is reprinted from Yicai Daily, author: Lin Xiaozhao)