Today, I saw this story on the cover page of the Jinghua Times, a Beijing daily:
China to Build Largest Transfer Station in Asia
While it's great that Beijing's adding more subway lines, is a transfer station actually something to brag about much less make front page news?
As I noted a couple weeks ago, the largest anything is often viewed as something that should a source of pride for the Chinese people (or so the people behind the building of it hope). But here is a case where size is objectively a bad thing. This transfer station will only involve the meeting of three lines. Three lines meet often on other subways without requiring such a large transfer point. A subway transfer point shouldn't be tiny, but anyone who's been in Xizhimen, Dongzhimen, Guomao or any of the many other ten-minute-long transfers in Beijing knows that larger is not better. I wonder when the Beijing city planners are going to stop trying to make things bigger and simply make them convenient.
Note: Sorry you have all been missing out on the riveting details of my life and my profound insights over the last couple weeks. I'm working on a time-consuming project, so posts will continue to be sporadic until that's over.
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