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Guangzhou Metro

Rapid transit railway in Guangzhou, China

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​金沙洲珠江大桥
Tim Wu · CC BY-SA 4.0

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The earliest efforts to build an underground rapid transit system in Guangzhou date back to 1960. In the two decades that followed, the project was brought into the agenda five times but ended up abandoned each time due to financial and technical difficulties. Preparation of what would lead to today's Guangzhou Metro did not start until the 1980s, and it was not until 1993 that construction of Line 1 officially began. Line 1 opened four years later in 1997 with five stations in operation.

As of 29 June 2025, Guangzhou Metro has 19 lines in operation: Line 1, Line 2, Line 3, Line 4, Line 5, Line 6, Line 7, Line 8, Line 9, Line 10, Line 11, Line 12, Line 13, Line 14, Line 18, Line 21, Line 22, Guangfo Line, and Zhujiang New Town APM reaching both the urban core and surrounding suburbs. Guangfo Line connects Guangzhou and Foshan and is the first metro line between two cities in the country. Daily service hours start at 6:00 am and end at midnight and daily ridership averages over 7 million. Having delivered 3.029 billion rides in 2018, Guangzhou Metro is the third busiest metro system in the world and the 3rd largest in terms of length, after the metro systems of Beijing and Shanghai. Guangzhou Metro operates 399 stations and 779.9 km (484.6 mi) of lines.

Extensive development of the metro network has been planned for the next decade, with construction started on Line 24 and pre-construction preparations on Line 28. Extensions of Line 8, Line 10, Line 12, Line 13, Line 14, Line 18, as well as the extension of Line 22 to Baiyun Airport are in the works.

Some of the system's lines were designed to operate much faster than traditional metro lines, with stations far apart and faster trainsets regularly running at 160 kilometres per hour (99 mph). Lines 18 and 22 are the fastest metro lines in China, a title previously held by Line 11 of the Shenzhen Metro.

History

Forays of the 1960s and 1970s

Chen Yu (Chinese: 陈郁), Governor of Guangdong in 1957–1967, was the first to have proposed an underground metro system for Guangzhou. In the summer of 1960, he ordered a secret geological survey of groundwater levels of Guangzhou. Six holes with an accumulated depth of 1980 m were drilled in the karst and alluvial plains in the city. The geological conditions of Guangzhou, despite their complexity, did not preclude the possibility of an underground metro system. Analysis of the survey data resulted in a confidential report titled Geological Survey for Guangzhou Underground Railway Project dated July 1961, the earliest one of such reports.

In 1965, Chen Yu along with Tao Zhu (陶铸), who had been the Governor of Guangdong and First Secretary of Guangdong Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, proposed in the wake of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that a tunnel is built in Guangzhou for wartime evacuations and post-war metro development. Approved by the central government, the project started in the spring of 1965. Due to its confidentiality in the context of intensification of the Vietnam War, the project adopted the obscure name of "Project Nine" (九号工程), where "Nine" was the number of strokes in "地下", the Chinese word for "underground".

As envisaged by Chen Yu, the metro system of Guangzhou would consist of two lines: a north–south line that would connect Nanfang Building to Sanyuanli via Renmin Lu and Jiefang Beilu, and an east–west line that would run from Xichang to Dongshan along today's Dongfeng Lu. The two lines roughly parallelled Line 2 and Line 1 of the modern days, respectively. The east–west line was never built, while Project Nine was dedicated to the north–south line. Over ten teams of miners were recruited for a project filled with hazards and perils. Constrained by extreme scarcity of time, monetary and material resources, the ambition to build a tunnel for the metro operation was scaled back— the capability to run trolleybuses was deemed acceptable. For ¥13 million, an 8 km (5.0 mi) long tunnel was completed in 1966. The tunnel was planned to be used as an air-raid shelter and eventual metro line; however, with a cross-section merely 3 m wide and 2.85 m tall, and exposed rocks and wooden trestles scattered everywhere, it was unusable for public transit. In the two decades that followed, four attempts were made to revive and expand Project Nine, first in 1970, next in 1971, then in 1974, and last in 1979. Due to lack of funds and complex geotechnical conditions, none of these efforts materialized.

Construction of Line 1

The metro project of Guangzhou was launched for the sixth time in 1984 as the Preparation Office of Guangzhou Metro, established back in 1979 as part of the last attempt to resurrect Project Nine, was moved out of the civil air-defense system and became a subordinate body of the Construction Commission of Guangzhou, bringing Guangzhou Metro into the scope of urban infrastructure development. Before the 1980s, war preparedness was the dominant tenet of underground infrastructure projects in mainland China. The construction of Guangzhou Metro marked the first deviation from the old doctrine as traffic itself became the prime consideration of the project.

The design of the initial metro network was a collaborative effort between China and France (SYSTRA). Four tentative designs were published on 14 March 1988 edition of Guangzhou Daily. From the four designs, one was selected based on expert and mass feedback. The selected design, featuring two intersecting lines, was the baseline typology for today's Line 1 and Line 2.

Construction of Line 1 officially commenced on 28 December 1993, although work on a trial section at Huangsha had begun in October 1992, five months before the feasibility study of the line was ratified by the State Planning Commission in March 1993. Various technologies novel to China's construction industry at the time were adopted in different sections of the project, notably including immersed tubes (Pearl River Tunnel) and tunnel boring machines (Huangsha–Martyrs' Park section). As the most massive urban infrastructure project in the history of Guangzhou, Line 1 required funding of ¥12.75 billion, all of which was raised by the local government. Use of cut-and-cover tunnels aggressively backed by then-mayor Li Ziliu necessitated the relocation of approximately 100,000 residents in 20,000 households and demolition of buildings totalling 1.1 km2 (0.42 sq mi) in the area and earned Li the nickname "Li the Demolisher" (Yue Chinese: 黎拆樓, romanized: lai4 caak3 lau2).

Three and a half years after construction started, the 5.4 km (3.4 mi) section from Xilang to Huangsha opened for trial operation on 28 June 1997. The remaining 13 km (8.1 mi), from Huangsha to Guangzhou East railway station, was completed eighteen months later on 28 December 1998. The entire line opened for sightseeing tours between 16 February and 2 March 1999, delivering 1.39 million rides 15 days before closing for final testing. Operation of Line 1 officially began on 28 June 1999, 34 years after the start of Project Nine in 1965.

Accelerated expansion in the 2000s

The success of Line 1 as a turnkey project acquired from Siemens with 100% imported electromechanical equipment prompted a wave of similar proposals from twelve other cities in mainland China toward the end of the 1990s. The fever for import-centric rapid transit caused the State Planning Committee to temporarily halt approval of rapid transit projects nationwide and regulate the localization rates of rolling stock suppliers. Amid tightened regulation, only Line 2 of Guangzhou Metro received the immediate green light to proceed in June 1998 on the condition that at least 60% of its electromechanical equipment must be sourced domestically.

Construction of Line 2 started in July 1998. Rolling stock manufacturer Bombardier airlifted the first two train cars in an An-124 from Berlin to Guangzhou in November 2002 after schedule delays. The first section, from Sanyuanli to Xiaogang opened on 29 December 2002; the remaining section from Xiaogang to Pazhou opened on 28 June 2003. At ¥2.13 billion, the equipment cost of Line 2 was 53% lower than that of Line 1. This demonstrated the feasibility of cost reduction through procurement of domestic equipment, revealing a path to project approval to other Chinese cities and reigniting their aspirations to own a rapid transit system.

The renewed craze for rapid transit across the country soon encountered a new round of tightened control on project approval around 2003. But Guangzhou was exempted along with Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. By the time Line 2 was completed, construction of Line 3, Line 4, and Guangfo Line had been underway, among which only Guangfo Line later fell to stringent regulation of approvals.

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