Experts specializing in city transportation and construction recently gathered in Tianjin Development Zone with German experts for a possible magnetic levitation (maglev) line linking Beijing and Tianjin so as to ease the traffic tension during the 2008 Olympic Games. Discussions were held under the chairmanship of Professor Wu Liangyong with Tsinghua University, a famous city designer of China.
Tianjin Airport has been a reserve second airport to Beijing Airport and the two airports joined in setting up Beijing Airport Club Co., Ltd in 2000. Beijing and Tianjin belong to the same air zone, with a distance of 137 km between the two. Beijing Airport has been run with a 24-million-passenger turnover last year, which is expected to exceed 27 million this year, a much far greater figure than designed. By 2008, big flows of visitors will rush into Beijing and it is urgent to construct a second airport backing up Beijing. The most convenient and economic way is to make full use of Tianjin Airport, many experts suggested.
Tianjin Airport has opened dozens of domestic and international airliners and it also serves as a cargo traffic hub of China. So it's natural to choose Tianjin for the site of the second international airport of Beijing and build a maglev line to link them up. But some experts hold to a different view, saying it should first develop railway express then the maglev. Others, from a view of investment, said the maglev line would cost at least hundreds of million yuan therefore should not be decided in a hurry.
Professor Wu, advocating for a "Grand Beijing" plan and the maglev line, said that we discuss the possibility of such a line because we want to promote exchanges between cities and speed up coordinated regional economy by solving the transportation problem.
(People's Daily September 21, 2002)
