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Beijing Airport Express (机场快轨; jichang kuaigui) opens up to the public today at 14:00. CNReviews reported on the Beijing Airport Express back on 6/27, when the inservice date was originally 7/1, but the launch date has been in flux ever since.

Photo courtesy of Beijingology

This news was first reported to the Anglophone world on Twitter by our fearless correspondent David Feng:

News on the opening is also on China Daily, and Sohu (zh). According to David on Beijing A to B, the fare will be RMB25. According to David on Beijingology:

The line will have only four stops along the entire line. There will be two stops in central Beijing — Dongzhimen and Sanyuanqiao — with the two remaining stops at Beijing Capital International Airport. The Airport Express reaches Terminal 3 before reaching Terminal 2; passengers for Terminal 1 need to use the transfer passageway at Terminal 2.

Service intervals are expected to be 5 minutes at the start, with the entire trip taking around 18 minutes (Terminal 3) or 25 minutes (Terminal 2).

The new subway line will be a driverless system.

The Airport Express will feed into the overall Beijing Subway system at Dongzhimen (interchange with Subway Line 2 and 13) and Sanyuanqiao (interchange with Subway Line 10). The Line 10 interchange is especially exciting because it provides one-transfer access to Beijing’s CBD and to Beijing’s Haidian high-tech district. For a high-tech entrepreneur traveling to Beijing, this is transit nirvana!

Here’s a video of an earlier test run I found on YouTube:

More on this live from David Feng once he recovers from staying up all night waiting for the Beijing Apple Store Sanlitun to open up!

David Feng chimes in with the following first-day travel experience:

I think it’s been like this for — let me think — the best part of 58 years since Beijing Airport entered the real world. The old brown terminal, Terminal 1, Terminal 2, and now Terminal 3. For too long, Beijing Airport was just a road-and-air biz. No trains. No way.

Enter the airport on and after 14:00 on July 19, 2008.

When the guys that built Terminal 2 got their hands dirty with the construction work, they left virtually zero space for a Subway connection — hence making the Terminal 2 something like an add-on. The thing’s not big, by the way: only one side platform. (To make it up, though, it has probably one of the widest side platforms ever.)

When the guys that built Terminal 3 got into action, however, they left the new T3 (as we call it in shorthand) with a glitzy new Airport Express terminal connection, with platform screen doors, faregates (later installed), and just about everything that plain shouts at you METRO STATION. Except for one thing.

The train.

Oh yes — the train. Flashback forward to July 19th — and to the new Airport Express service.

The new Airport Express links Beijing with the airport — and by that, we mean really quickly. This is a four-stops-only biz: two stations in central Beijing, two on at the airport. I got onto the train at Sanyuanqiao, which is the second stop; I hailed from the Line 10 interchange. (The transfer passage, by the way, was so short that it seemed nonexistent.) I tapped in with my Beijing Super Pass (I think I was the only one; other got Single Journey Tickets for the line), and waited for the train, sure not to miss it. (If you miss your train, by the way, you’re treated to an excruciating wait of 15 more minutes before a 4-car Airport Express heads your way. 2017 plans call for gaps of 4 minutes only between trains. We sure hope they start shortening the gaps — soon.)

The train wasn’t exactly smooth — even with semi-autopilot on, the train behaved at best like a boat going through sorta-rough waters. (The “vomit-inducing”, as I later noted, weather outside — the heavens threatening to open up — made the trip that bit more miserable.)

However, the trip was pleasant for one thing: you got a seat. Imagine standing (like you do on main line Subway lines) for 15-odd minutes. (A repeat trip today saw me getting productive on the road — I pulled out the MacBook and got online while mobile. By the way, I cheated — a la GPRS. No wifi on the Airport Express — yet.)

Also, one of the best things about the Airport Express is that they run to an invisible schedule — 15 minutes as we have it. The gaps are uniform from the first train to the very last one. Little wonder, then, that when I finished my bit of Yoshinoya at T3, I was able to head back to central Beijing — in good time.

The Airport Express is a “good thing”, but here’s what they could’ve done (or, indeed, could do — remember, there’s plenty of room for improvement coming down the road) to make the thing better:

• Shorten the gaps between one train and the other.
• Add a station near Dashanzi/Wangjing East. (It won’t kill you, by the way; Line 14 is expected to snake its way across the region.)
• Add wifi to the thing and either make it free or affordable. (Wifi on the Heathrow Express is about GPB 5 — OK in the UK, but bloody murder in Renminbi Yuan.)
• Make the thing smoother. Make the thing more quiet.
• Finally, make all faregates super-wide. (About 30% - 40% of the faregates are — a massive improvement over what they have on downtown Subway lines.)

For Day One, though, good stuff!

OK, so you’ve just landed at Beijing’s Capital International Airport (PEK). Welcome to China! So, what’s next? Into Beijing you go.

Wait. There’s got to be a way for you to get from A to B — in this case, from Beijing Airport into “the Jing”, as they say.

Beijing Airport used to be a remote outpost — far beyond the reach of any ring road until 2002. Just recently, the airport itself has been boxed up — by a ring expressway network. New towns are planned north and east of the airport.

How times have changed.

Click the image for a bigger map (Airport transit network relative to central Beijing)
Click the image for a bigger map (Airport freeway network).Destination: Central Beijing (e.g. CBD & Wangfujing)
Route: Airport Freeway or 2nd Airport Freeway This is the path the great majority of you will take. Most of you probably aren’t heading to the Great Wall next to the reservoir in northern Beijing — yet; you’ve got, instead, a hotel room waiting for you. We hear you.If your destination is somewhere more CBD-ish or near eastern urban Beijing (around the eastern 4th Ring Road 四环), you might be better served with the new, sure-not-to-be-clogged-up 2nd Airport Freeway (机场第二高速). It’s actually supposed to be called the Airport East Freeway, geo-wise, but there you go anyways. This new freeway opened fresh on Summer Solstice 2008, which for those of you who prefer nitty-gritty figures actually turns out to be June 21, 2008.
If your destination is more a la central Beijing — Tian’anmen, Wangfujing, Chang’an Avenue — you’ll be served by the oldie-but-goldie Airport Freeway (机场高速). The Airport Freeway is a tad more crowded — the thing’s been there for about the best part of 16 years — but it’ll get to your destination in central Beijing. If you’re staying in the hotel cluster on the northeastern 3rd Ring Road, take the Airport Freeway; it’s closer to the whole cluster.Destination: The West, Northwest, or North (e.g. the Great Wall)
Route: Airport North Freeway (机场北线)If, however, your first destination, as a matter of fact, is the Great Wall next to the reservoir in northern rural Beijing, your ticket is the Airport North Freeway (机场北线) . The Airport North Freeway links you to the Jingcheng (Beijing-Chengde) Freeway, which heads into northern rural Beijing’s Huairou District. (Not a lot of five-star hotels there.)

If you’re heading further west, you’ll need to switch on over to the 6th Ring Road heading counterclockwise when the duo (Jingcheng Freeway and 6th Ring Road) meet. This is the direction for you if you happen to be going to western Beijing’s Mentougou District. No idea where that is? Tanzhe Temple — anyone? This is supposed to be the temple in Beijing that predated Beijing.

And if you’re living next to the Great Wall (as in the Commune by the Great Wall), you’ll take the same route, except that you’ll head onto the Badaling Freeway (八达岭高速) a bit after getting on the 6th Ring Road. The Badallineing Freeway is true to its name — this is the freeway that gets you to The Wall!Access to the Airport North Freeway is a bit complex at best.

If you’re coming in from Terminal 2, you’ll need to head via Terminal 1 to connection roads to the freeway. If you hail from Terminal 3 — you’ll need to reach Terminal 2 and 1 (in that order — to the shock of mathematicians) before you set flight on the Airport North Freeway. If you’re landing in Beijing’s Terminal 1, you’re all set. Just follow the signs for the Airport North Freeway. Life sure is easy for T1-ers.

Destination: The East or Northeast (e.g. Pinggu District)
Route: Airport South Freeway followed by Jingping or Jingcheng Freeways

So what if your arrival in the Chinese capital sees peach-picking in eastern Beijing’s Pinggu District as the first must-do item on the agenda? Or where should you head to (freeway-wise) if you long to see the Great Wall at Simatai (think: mountain + Great Wall on top)?

In this case, you’ll be served well by the Airport South Freeway (机场南线). Head further east until Litian Bridge. This is where you’ll have to make up your mind.

Continue, by all means, further east if you’re headed to peach-populated Pinggu District (does this thing sound too close to the Swiss penguin comic series Pingu? Then again, we digress.) You’ll be on the Jingping (Beijing-Pinggu) Freeway before long.

But make a turn onto the 6th Ring Road headed north and head onto the Jingcheng Freeway later if you’ll be making it into Miyun — and the Great Wall at Simatai. (Actually, there are about a million and one more great scenic spots in the northeast, but we’ll leave that for another day.)

Destination: The South (e.g. Daxing)
Route: Airport South Freeway (机场南线) followed by 6th Ring Road

Got an invitation to Panggezhuang, Daxing, aka Watermelon Heaven? Or what if you’ve been invited to that great big Beijing Economic Technological Development Area in Yizhuang (亦庄)? (This actually could happen to you — especially if FDI + biz = your trip to the Chinese capital.) All those wonders are in southern Beijing.

And you’ll need to get to these places. Right. It’s time to head onto the Airport South Freeway and head further east. Once again, before long, you’re confronted with this massive Litian Bridge.

The trick here is to turn right and head clockwise onto the ringway. Before long (a la a couple dozen kilometers or more), you’ll be in southern Beijing.

Zukunftsmusik: The Airport Express (轨道交通机场线)

Click the image for a bigger map.All right, we hear you. All you want to do is to get into Beijing — downtown Beijing — nothing more, nothing less.There is an incredibly easy way to reach central Beijing straight from the airport. (Note, however, that this will not get you to “outward” places such as the city suburbs. But that’ll be good for about 90+% of you anyways.) It’s called the Airport Express (轨道交通机场线), and by the time July 2008 rolls around, you’ll be able to take this express train into Beijing. This special, airport-optimized line of the Beijing Subway network will be reality pre-Olympics. Think of it as the airport-to/from-central-Beijing train.

Fares haven’t been finalized for the service — it’s not going to be cheap (RMB 25 or RMB 30 are on the table). But at the end of the day, it’ll be the only way into Beijing where you are absolutely guaranteed that you’ll be kept out of Beijing’s best road export: jams galore.The Airport Express will link central Beijing to Terminal 3 within just 16 minutes, and Terminal 2 from Dongzhimen (东直门), central Beijing is no more than 25 minutes away. The distance between Dongzhimen and Beijing Airport is 23 km by car. It presently costs RMB 16 for airport express bus and RMB 70 by taxi.

Trains leave pretty frequently (about 8 to 10 minutes is what we’re hearing, although we’re not too sure yet). Into Beijing, you get to change at Sanyuanqiao for Line 10 bound for Zhongguancun and the CBD or at Dongzhimen for the inner city loop line (Line 2) or the outer suburbs loop (Line 13).

There are 4 stops along the express rail link: Terminal 3, Terminal 2, Sanyuanqiao (三元桥) and Dongzhimen. Dongzhimen will be the final city terminus. The Infrastructure Powers That Be, fully recognizing the current transport mélange at Dongzhimen, are putting the touching pieces to the Dongzhimen Transport Hub. The Airport Express will come into the hub on Basement Level 4, with Lines 2 and 13 a few floors above. You’ll actually be able to follow the signs and complete the interchange without ever seeing a ray of light (sun or moon). After the Games, you’ll even be able to check in your bags from Dongzhimen.And when it opens, this will be one sweet service.

Now before you daydream your way into the Airport Express — get packin’! Come to Beijing! (I know, we have a sub-optimal visa policy, but if you’re prepared in full — we should be able to see you in the capital!)