Talking Travel: Your semi-regular roundup of Beijing's latest transportation-related news.

Beijing-Zhangjiakou-Hohhot and Datong high-speed line now open

Just before the New Year, Beijing heralded the opening of the new 174km Beijing-Zhangjiakou (AKA Jingzhang High Speed Railway) train line, which will transport passengers from the capital to the Hebei to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics venues and ski resorts.

Opening on Dec 30, and touted as the world’s first automated high-speed rail line, it also boasts an underground Badaling Great Wall stop as well as a 52.2km Chongli high-speed rail line, which ends to serve the Olympic Village in Prince Edward City.

With a change at Zhangjiakou, the new rail link also opens up a couple of great weekend-friendly escapes, including expedited travel to the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot (down from 9 hours 15 minutes to 2 hours 9 minutes) and Datong in Shanxi province (down from around 6 hours to 1 hour 42 minutes).

Beijing-Harbin now only takes 4.5 hours

The Beijing-Harbin-Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao corridor has also expanded, allowing train travel from Beijing to Shenyang in Liaoning province to 2.5 and Beijing to Harbin in 4.5 hours, down from 7.5 hours.

The Beijing-Shenzhen high-speed railway is 698km long and travels at 350km per hour and connects the northern end of the Beijing-Shenzhen high-speed railway to the Harbin-Dalian high-speed railway through Shenyang, while the southern end is connected to the Beijing-Guangzhou and Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail via Beijing.

Shuangjing transfer between Line 7 and 10 finally opens

Commuters and residents in Shuangjing have long been frustrated by the lack of transfer between subway Lines 7 and 10, forcing them to make the walk up to Guomao if they wanted to travel to the east or west of the city. No more! With Shuangjing's Line 7 transfer station officially opening on Dec 28.

The new Line 7 link also means that residents have easy access to Beijing West Train Station and Happy Valley.

Despite Shuangjing being one of the city's busiest stations, the Line 10 platforms were not originally designed to handle additional interchange traffic and deemed unsuitable for additional transfer traffic. Now work will begin on an interchange hall in the northeast corner of Shuangjing overpass (Exit B).

Baidu secures licences to test self-driving cars in Beijing

Things started strong for Chinese search giant Baidu as they became one of the first companies to secure licenses to test self-driving cars carrying human passengers on designated roads in Beijing. The announcement on Dec 31, puts Baidu one step closer towards the launch of its commercial robot-taxi fleet in mainland China, dubbed Apollo Go.

Baidu's tech competitors Tencent and Alibaba are also conducting self-driving car tests, with the former securing a license from the Chinese government to begin testing autonomous cars in Shenzhen, while the latter is currently looking to hire around 50 engineers for its AI research lab.

Autonomous vehicles are expected to be worth more than USD 500 billion by 2030, when there will be an estimated 8 million self-driving cars on public roads, according to Venture Beat.

Beijing drivers reportedly entering sham marriages to get their cars registered

Strict license plate laws in Beijing are driving desperate commuters to resort to sham marriages, reports the SCMP. The news, first aired by CCTV, outlined how some motorists were paying agencies up to RMB 160,000 (USD 22,700) to help organize a sham marriage with an owner of prized plates, which allows them to transfer the plates into their name before getting a divorce.

The measures are a knock-on effect of Beijing's strict limitations as to how plates are issued per year, with 2,600 applicants for every petrol-powered vehicle plate. Those who want a license for an electric car may need to wait until 2028.

Meanwhile, the government has also been steadily lowering the annual quota for new local licenses from 240,000 in 2013 to 100,000 last year. The result is that car owners are having to resort to more and desperate measures to secure a plate that will allow them access to the capital's roads.

Restrictions may soon loosen, however, with China's State Council calling for cities like Beijing and Shanghai to make it easier for consumers to buy cars and receive license plates, according to Caixin. The calls for consumer restrictions come amid the domestic auto market's worst-ever downturn alongside the nation’s slowing economy.

Subway transit exceeds above-ground transit

The recently released Beijing Transportation Development Comprehensive Report from Beijing's Jiaotong University has detailed the city's commuter habits for 2017 and 2018. The data shows that for the first time, Beijing's subway passenger volume surpassed ground transportation for two consecutive years.

In 2017, the number of trips in Beijing's central urban areas was 27.65 million (excluding walking) on average per day, an increase from the previous year. In the same year, subway rides accounted for 22 percent of all travel, while bus transportation accounted for 22.7 percent, and cyclists accounted for 17 percent. Car travel, including taxis, accounted for 38.3 percent of the total traffic. The annual passenger volume of the subway reached 3.778 billion, with an average daily passenger flow of 12.411 million.

In 2018, the city's rail transit passenger volume was 3.89 billion, and the ground bus passenger volume was 3.19 billion, marking that Beijing is ushering in a true "subway era," according to Xinhua.

Delta to move operations to Daxing

Delta Air Lines will move operations from Beijing Capital International Airport to Beijing's Daxing International Airport in March 2020. The relocation parallels Delta's SkyTeam partner China Eastern's move to the new airport south of Beijing.

The move means that Delta’s two nonstop daily services from Beijing to Detroit and Seattle will also move south, with customers eventually having access to over 30 domestic city options across China through codeshare flights with China Eastern. China Eastern, meanwhile, is expected to move most of its flights bar Beijing-Shanghai to Daxing in the first quarter of 2020.

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Images: Railly News, Travel China Guide, The Points Guy, Wikipedia, Weibo, China Daily, Devon Line, Jesse Lee (via Twitter)