Beijing unveils new subway as cars hit 3 million mark

BEIJING, May 25 (Reuters) Beijing unveiled a new state of the art subway line today which it hopes will help persuade the city's car owners to leave their vehicles at home and ease congestion before the 2008 Olympics.

New vehicles are hitting the roads of Beijing at a rate of more than 1,000 a day and the 3 million mark will be reached tomorrow, according to the city's transport commission.

''Tomorrow we'll have Beijing's 3 millionth vehicle on the road,'' Zhou Zhengyu, deputy director of the commission, said.

''In a time when the city is becoming more and more crowded, to develop public transportation is an important way of easing Beijing's traffic congestion.'' The new 1.66 billion dollars subway line will open to the public on September 20 and run for 27 km (17 miles) along a north-south axis, passing about a mile east of Tiananmen Square.

The carriages are a refreshing contrast to the old rolling stock running on Beijing's four existing lines, with good lighting, air conditioning and plasma screens to entertain the passengers.

Three additional lines scheduled to open before next August's Olympics, including an express line to the new airport and a special branch line to the Olympic Green, will increase the current 114 km of track to 200 km.

After the Games, further investment, which is currently running at about 3.92 billion dollars a year on transport infrastructure, will see 561 km of track on the network by 2015.

The roads of the Chinese capital are regularly snarled up with traffic jams, reflecting the rapid growth of car ownership by the city's burgeoning middle class.

For many years the bicycle was king in Beijing and by 1978 there were still only 77,000 cars. China's opening up to the outside world changed that and the 1 million mark was reached in 1997 and 2003 saw the total pass 2 million.

REUTERS AKD BD1802