The largest renovation project ever conducted on Beijing’s 30-year-old subway system wil begin.
　　The project will start this year. The investment will be 4.3 billion yuan, of which 3.7 billion yuan are for the improvement of trains and facilities, and the remainder for the construction of an Automatic Fare Collection system.

　　The renovations include updating and replacing tracks, trains, signals, communication systems, power suppliers and other important facilities before 2008.

　　Replacing the tracks and building a ticket system will begin in July this year. The restoration work will be done at night, between 12:30 and 4 am, when the subway system is out of service, to ensure the regular operations won’t be seriously dsirupted.

　　According to the plan, 180 trains now running on Line 1 and the Loop Line will be replaced by new air-conditioned ones.

　　After that, the minimum interval between two trains will be shortened from the current 3-plus minutes to 2.5 minutes, which is the international standard.

　　The AFC system construction is scheduled to be finished by 2007. By then, passengers will be able to transfer between all subway lines with a single transportation pass.