BEIJING—As Toronto wrestles with its transit future, the Beijing subway system did something stunning last week: it cut the ribbons on five new lines and 108 kilometres of new track — all in a single day.

That's equal to one and a half times Toronto's entire Toronto subway system.

The new lines and dozens of sparkling new stations came on stream last Thursday to broad acclaim.

In Toronto, the TTC might claim to be “The Better Way,” but here in Beijing the operative slogan seems to be “Just do it.”

There's nothing tentative about Beijing's approach.

Faced with serious gridlock — just like Toronto, but on a monumental scale — Beijing has decided to move aggressively. There is a sudden sense of urgency about public transport here.

The new lines, with a price tag of $9.4 billion, were not supposed to be completed until 2012. But with a transportation crisis on their hands, transit authorities moved that date forward.

They wanted these feeders from the suburbs completed so that they can turn their attention to building more lines in the city centre, where they're most crucially needed.

With last week's new additions, the subway network grew to 336 kilometres from 228 overnight. At the same time, a single fare costs 30 cents — a tenth of the cost of a trip on the TTC.

And there's more expansion in the works, the Beijing Mass Transit Railway Operation Corp. says. The network will grow to more than 700 kilometres — 10 times that of Toronto's current system — by 2020.

“We intend to bring on more new track every year for the next five years,” says Jia Peng, chief spokesman for the transit corporation. “We have the technology, we have the funds; the only thing we don't have much of is time — and time is crucial.

“We have got to ease Beijing's traffic congestion problem.”

Last year more than 2,000 new cars flooded into Beijing's streets and highways each day, for a total of nearly 800,000 new vehicles in 2010.

Desperate to curb congestion in the city, the government announced it will restrict new car sales in Beijing this year to just 20,000 per month, holding a monthly public lottery for the privilege of buying one. Annual sales in the capital in 2011 will be capped at 240,000.

In a liberal democracy such a move to restrict private purchases might trigger riots in the car-congested streets. Not in authoritarian China. In the first five days after the car lottery opened, more than 100,000 Beijingers dutifully filled out applications.

And as uncomfortable as it might be for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford to be compared with those in the Communist camp, he has something in common with Beijing's masters: like him, they are averse to light rail systems.

Ford doesn't want them because he believes they'll clog and constrict traffic on Toronto's streets. Beijing doesn't want them because they can't do the job.

“We are facing an urgent need to build a system that is capable of carrying the greatest number of passengers possible,” says Jia.

With a ridership rate now exceeding five million passenger trips per day and growing (Toronto hovers just below one million), Beijing is looking at acquiring even larger trains for the future, he says.

Clearly, the path to Beijing's transit future will glide on heavy, not light, rail. And all economic indicators suggest that future will be strong.

But who could have guessed that a country that was so far behind could come back so far, so fast?

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When it was first unveiled in 1954, Toronto's first subway line was a powerful symbol: smooth and speedy transport in a growing modern metropolis.

At that time, Mao Zedong led an impoverished China. He had only begun to dream of an underground system — mainly for defence purposes in the event of a military attack. Beijing's subway opened to limited travel in the late 1960s, but not to the general public until 1971.

Mao's death in 1976 and the emergence of reformer Deng Xiaoping brought modernization and expansion to Beijing's subway. Then, in the lead-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing's subway grew from four to nine lines.

When former Toronto mayor David Miller visited here in April that year, he marvelled at China's ability to draw up plans and swiftly follow through. “The Chinese don't wait,” he said. “They act.”

One of the reasons for that speed, of course, is a planning process that is less transparent than that in Canada. Environmental assessments for public projects in Canada, for example, can get bogged down in hearings for months and sometimes years, whereas here they are conducted by the state's own agencies with little if any public input.

The government is planner, builder and arbiter all in one.

Authoritarian rule comes with its privileges. But “safety” remains paramount, the transit corporation's Jia emphasizes.

Other factors in Beijing's speed are cheaper labour and more technological investment. Beijing has scores of tunnel-boring machines while the TTC has four on order for its 8.6-kilometre Spadina subway extension, expected to be in service in 2015.

The TTC standard estimate for subways is about $300 million per kilometre. Beijing paid $110 million for its new lines. Few here would argue with the benefits.

In the golden light of late afternoon one recent weekday, 70-year-old grandfather Lu Shuxun stepped from the glistening new Xiaohongmen subway station on the newly minted Yizhuang line with his 5-year-old granddaughter, Lingyi. He had only praise for the new line.

He'd just picked up Lingyi from her preschool in once-distant Fangzhuang. “Normally, the trip by bus would take at least an hour,” said Lu, clutching his smiling grandchild's pink knapsack. “But with traffic jams, a one-way trip could take as long as 90 minutes. Today it was 20. It's a lot better for us now that they've opened this line.”

It also speaks to planning.

Twenty years from now, when China is expected to have the world's largest economy and rule the world, Lingyi herself might use this line to commute to work in Beijing.

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