Why China Opens Their New Metro Lines Every December

This past December, 10 (!) different Chinese cities opened new metro lines, and it has been the case that Decembers are new metro-filled for China for the past number of years. But why December? Let's take a closer look today.

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=ABOUT ME=

Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!

Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.

[romandelasalle]

In lots of places the metro opens before xmas or elections to show people that the goverment is building and improving things.

[cx]

I was in Chengdu on Chinese new year 2010 and couldn't believe that such a huge city has no metro and we always have to take the bus. I just checked the map and boy things have changed.

[JoshuaFagan]

Obviously, there are China-specific reasons, but the whole "we said it would be open in 2022, so we'll rush a bit to make sure it opens in December" thing is fairly common worldwide. Dhaka and Lagos both opened metros in December for this exact reason. It was also when the new Grand Central Madison in my city (NYC) almost opened, before meeting a few last-minute delays.

[enderwu]

The Spring Festival in China is a very important festival for the vast majority of Chinese people.

Many Chinese people have been busy working abroad for a year, and the Spring Festival is the time for them to go home and reunite.
This will lead to hundreds of millions of Chinese traveling between north and south of China, from their workplaces to their hometowns.
Therefore, the Spring Festival will lead to an extremely large passenger flow.

(The Spring Festical = Chinese New Year)

[nmhrio]

Finally! I love how China is designing their cities. I constantly follow Walk East on YouTube and they really are living in the future. Would love to see more coverage because I feel like it goes unnoticed.

[gentuxable]

In Europe most of the transit lines also open in December (in 2022 on the 11th to be precise) because that's when the new international timetable goes into action. Like Line 20 between Zurich Altstetten and Killwangen-Spreitenbach that opened in 2022.

[DTLfan]

May I propose a transit battle: Singapore MRT v Hong Kong MTR video? With both cities having similar histories, it'd be interesting to see how they have each evolved into the systems they are today. It might be worth taking into account stuff like interchange types and out of station transfer rules into such a video too.

[lw]

I'd be interested in watching a video on regional metros generally- e.g. not just BART but also the chinese ones you mentioned, probably others etc

[kingmine]

More Chinese metro videos would be great, great video! I am also interested in high speed rails in other countries

[溧水]

Finally something about China! Local Nanjinger here and I have to admit theyve done amazing on the metro this year! They opened lots of suburban lines for connectivity this year like S6 and S8

[Ice_Karma]

Let's take a moment to appreciate Reese's efforts in pronouncing Chinese names. He didn't say them like a native speaker of Mandarin, but he did much better than your typical native English speaker! (Edited: Okay, he flubbed Beijing a bit, using the French j sound.)

[fauzirahman]

The Chinese New Year period is pretty much equivalent to Christmas in western countries. Most things get shut down and it gets really quiet, with many people going back to their hometown to celebrate with their family.

[MaxSum]

Guangzhou metro got a weird habit that when they open a new line, it’s always on 28th of some month.
We metro nerds call it the lucky day of Guangzhou Metro😂

[TagusMan]

Meanwhile, in Toronto, one new metro line opens once every 50 years.

[tonychen]

Just back from a trip to visit my friend in Nanjing, as a Shunde, Foshan native, having a metro station at your doorstep really means a lot, it only cost me 14CNY and about 2hrs to head to Baiyun Airport in Guangzhou, which is way cheaper than a 60 yuan airport coach which I need to drag my luggage for 20minutes to the coach pick up point, not to mention I can visit my old friends in downtown Foshan without worrying missing on the last inter-region bus at 9pm.
Yeah it may take some time for businesses around the stations and commuters to fully commit to less drive more metro approach, but metro service will help moving a large amount of population at driving distance and expand surrounding businesses a lot.

[shkltjv]

Shenzhen has opened 128km of metro in the last 3 months of 2022 (the most in one year by its history), including 4 new lines (Line 6 Branch, 12, 14, 16) and 3 huge metro hubs (Gangxia North, Huangmugang and Universiade). Gangxia North station is the most important node of 120km/h express lines in the network, connecting Line 11 (Western/Airport Express) and 14 (Eastern Express) with two regional lines (Line 2/8 and Line 10), additional with future underground connection to Gangxia station on line 1. It has a great weight on functionality and also has a very futuristic architecture design. Huangmugang and Universiade have beautiful and gigantic architecture as well. All 4 new lines are GoA4 automated

[mariachrzski]

Are you eventually planning an explainer on some more Chinese metro networks? Preferrably Guangzhou's (for me)

[mfahz]

Bro RMTransit LITERALLY SHOWED MY HOME at 4:30

[isisstarlights]

Hello! Great video! At 3:10 you said to comment if interested in an updated video on china’s rolling stock. We’ll I’d love to see a follow up video!

[Myway]

The end of each year is an important milestones for cities infrastructure construction, to hit the target date is critical for the local governments to have ongoing and future contraction budgets to be endorsed.