"So while we're investing in new rail lines here, it's in the context of an enormously extensive bus system in the midst of an enormously extensive road system. Whereas in Shanghai, the situation is very, very different."
With a population of more than 20 million people, and more arriving every day, Shanghai is an urban planner's dream and nightmare. Its streets strike a visitor as a free-for-all, a mad crush of people and bicycles and motorcycles and cars, all swooping in and out, sometimes at breakneck speeds, seemingly missing each other by millimeters, except when they don't.
The amazing thing is that, generally speaking, it all works. Like L.A., New York or any other great city, there's an improbable alchemy at work.
It won't work forever, though, as cars replace bicycles and the population continues to increase. The city is banking on the subway system to serve as a pressure valve for congestion. Some transportation planners warn that it won't accomplish that goal if Shanghai doesn't take other steps to reduce the number of cars heading into the city center every day.
At the moment, Shanghai's five subway lines, if laid end to end, would run about 80 miles. By the end of this year, that figure should be 125 miles; by 2010, when a world exposition will be held in Shanghai, it is expected to double to about 250 miles, with five or six more lines opening.
Plans call for a system that, by about 2020, would resemble a spaghetti bowl, with 22 lines and hundreds of stations. The system would stretch about 560 miles and serve more than 12 million people a day.
No subway system in the world comes close to that.
"Yes, we were quite forward-thinking," said Xu, the city planner. "Because our aim, our target, was pretty clear. Shanghai cannot lag behind forever. If you don't have the hope, the dream, you cannot have city planning.
"We have no other option. We will pass away, but Shanghai will still be here."
mitchell.landsberg @latimes.com
Cao Jun in The Times' Shanghai Bureau contributed to this report.
