Telecoms · 19 May 2017

Gigantic network – Beijing's driverless metro lines as an export hit

While Germany's first driverless metro lines are rolling, China is already working on global market dominance – with the New Silk Road as the export route.

Germany’s first driverless metro lines are rolling. But China wants to capture the global market. The pilot project is starting in Beijing – and the new Silk Road is to serve as the export route. Handelsblatt correspondent Stephan Scheuer visited the operations control centre in Beijing.

Published in Handelsblatt

May 24, 2017 ·World Stories

Beijing's driverless metro lines as an export hit

While Germany's first driverless metro lines are rolling, China is already working on global market dominance. The New Silk Road is to serve as the export route. Beijing is just the beginning.

Machine translation. The verbatim German original is on handelsblatt.com (link below).

Red, green, blue: the vast display board in the operations centre of the Chinese metro control room outputs the latest figures on riders of the Beijing Underground every second. Director Zhang Mingui's hand rests lightly on the control panel. His fingers touch the buttons as carefully as if he were patting a baby. The computer terminal in front of him is something like his child – because Zhang is working on his life's work. "We will roll out driverless trains across the board. Beijing is just the beginning."

A formidable beginning. The metro network of the Chinese capital is expanding rapidly. In 2010 the city's more than 20 million inhabitants had around 336 kilometres of metro line available. By the end of last year it had already reached 574 kilometres. The network is to be extended to more than 900 kilometres by 2020. "But that is not enough. That is not even half of Beijing's population," says Zhang.

Even now, however, costs are exploding. The Beijing city government spends heavily to keep public transport fares as low as possible. But the scale of the subsidies is getting out of control. Expenditure rises by 20 per cent every year, Chinese media reported. In 2015 Beijing already doubled average ticket prices. Yet the state still subsidises around half the cost of every journey. A metro ticket for a trip of up to six kilometres costs three yuan – about 40 cents.

Driverless metro lines are intended to cut staffing costs, make operations more efficient and ultimately reduce costs. "But we have much more ahead of us," says Zhang. "Look around you," he invites. The transport authority command centre extends across 2,350 square metres – but only around a dozen staff members sit in front of monitors. "Thanks to big data we have already been able to reduce headcount significantly. The management of existing metro lines runs largely automatically," says Zhang.

Train drivers still sit in every train. That is to change in the coming months, when the 16.6-kilometre Yanfang Line is inaugurated as the first fully automated metro connection. In this respect Beijing trails cities such as Munich and Nuremberg, which already operate fully automated driverless metro trains.