User:Kxx/Sandbox/Guangzhou Metro

Forays of the 1960s and 1970s
Chen Yu, 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 $1,980 m$ were drilled in the plateaus and alluvial plains in the city. Defying stereotype, 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, who had been the Governor of Guangdong and First Secretary of Guangdong Committee of the Communist Party of China, proposed in the wake of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that a tunnel be 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 its confidentiality in the context of intensification of the Vietnam War, the project adopted the obscure name of "Project Nine", 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 metro operation was scaled back—capability to run trolleybuses was deemed acceptable. At a cost of ¥13 million, a 8 km long tunnel was completed in 1966. The tunnel was ready for use as an air-raid shelter; however, with a cross-section merely 3 m wide and 2.85 m tall, and exposed rocks and wooden trestles scattered everywhere, it was totally 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. None of these efforts eventually 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 defence system and became a subordinate body of the Construction Commission of Guangzhou, bringing Guangzhou Metro into the scope of urban infrastructure development. Prior to 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.

Stations of Line 1 in 1988 design [show]

Guangzhou Steel &amp; Iron Works

Kengkou

Huadiwan

Fangcun

Huangsha

Changshou Lu

Zhongshan 7 Lu

Ximenkou

Gongyuanqian

Peasant Movement Institute

Martyrs' Park

Dongshankou

Yangji

Tiyu Xilu

Tianhe Sports Center

Guangzhou East Railway Station

Stations of Line 2 in 1988 design [show]

Xinshi

Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport

Jichang Lu

Sanyuanli

Guangzhou Railway Station

Yuexiu Park

Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall

Gongyuanqian

Haizhu Square

The 2nd Workers' Cultural Palace

Jiangnan Xincun

Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts

Sun Yat-sen University

Lujiang

Zhujiang Film Studio

Chigang

Design of the metro network was a collaborative effort between China and France. Four tentative designs were published on the 14 March 1988 edition of Guangzhou Daily. From the four designs, one was selected based on expert and mass feedbacks. The selected design, featuring two intersecting lines, formed the foundation of the eventual layout of Line 1 and Line 2.

Construction of Line 1 officially commenced on 28 December 1993, although work at 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 history of Guangzhou, Line 1 required a funding of ¥12.75 billion, all of which was raised by the local government. Approximately 100,000 residents in 20,000 households along the line were relocated, and buildings in areas totalling 1.1 km2 were demolished.

Three and a half years after construction started, the 5.4 km section from Xilang to Huangsha opened for trial operation on 28 June 1997. The remaining 13 km, 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 during 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.