The city currently has a population of over 16.3 million people, including 13.3 million registered citizens and more than 3 million migrant workers.

It has recently designed its downtown transportation network on the belief the city's population will reach 17 million by 2020, according to urban planners.

While officials won't say how large they expect the local population to become by that time, they did say they now think it will be significantly larger than previously expected.

Though the natural growth rate among citizens is currently running about minus 2.6 per thousand, the rapid increase in the number of migrants moving into the city from other parts of the country will increase the population quickly, creating many problems for urban planners.

The rush of migrants to Shanghai is pushed, in part, by a central government call for big cities to speed up the process of urbanization.

"Despite the increasing population, our promise to local citizens about living conditions won't be compromised," Vice Mayor Han Zheng told a government meeting on Saturday.

Those promises include increasing the amount of greenspace in the city to 9 square meters per capita and creating a transportation system capable of moving people from any point in the city to any other part of Shanghai within one hour.

When previewing this year's work, Xiong Jianping, director of the Shanghai Construction and Management Commission, said the city's current 65-kilometer rail-transportation network will be increased by 60 kilometers by the year's end.

The new lines will include a 30-kilometer-magneti-cally-levitated-high-speed line linking Pudong International Airport and Longyang Metro Station, which is open for sightseeing only at the moment; the extension of Rail Transportation No. 1 from Shanghai Railway Station to Baoshan District; and RT No. 5 linking Xinzhuang to Minghang District.

"For this year, we will greatly shorten the intervals between trains on RT No. 1, RT No. 2, and RT No. 3 to three minutes, four minutes, and seven-and-a-half minutes respectively by adding new trains," Xiong said.

Three more connections across the Huangpu River - the Lupu Bridge, Dalian Road Tunnel, and Outer Ring Road Tunnel - will open to traffic this year, expanding the traffic capacity across the river by 70 percent, Xiong added.

Also on Saturday, the Fuxing Road Tunnel construction officials said they began drilling from Pudong to Puxi along a 1,214-meter tunnel - the world's first two-level under-ground passageway - which will connect Fuxing Road in Puxi and Zhangyang Road in Pudong.

The tunnel structure is expected to be completed by the year's end.

To improve the local environment, the city wants to build up 4,000 hectares of greenspace this year, meaning the city's green area will grow from 25 to 35 percent and its green area per capita will increase from 6 to 9 square meters.

It also wants to transfer 50,000 gas-powered cars to use natural gas and refit 1,000 public buses to be powered by compressed natural gas or CNG for environmental protection.

(eastday.com February 10, 2003)