Cheap and Efficient: Capital's New Subway Route

It's clean and efficient, was built in four years and even the longest journey will cost just 14 pence.

Londoners can only gawp in envy at Beijing's latest subway route, part of a staggeringly fast expansion in the capital's network: from about 90 miles to 125 miles by the time the Olympics begin, and about 350 miles by 2015.

Line 10, opened to the media for the first time yesterday, is one of the many huge construction projects being unveiled in the runup to the Olympic games in August.

China hopes to ease the path of hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors - and to impress them with its newfound wealth and development.

Yesterday also saw the arrival of the first passengers at the capital's 27bn yuan (£1.9bn) third airport terminal; bigger than all five at Heathrow at 1.3m sq metres.

The glass-and-steel construction, designed by Norman Foster and said to resemble a dragon, makes Beijing airport the world's largest.

"It is the epitome of China's fast-growing economy and portrays our strong state power," said Zhang Guobao, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, the main economic planning agency.

China has invested almost 300bn yuan on construction projects in preparation for the games. But while the Olympics has provided the impetus, growing domestic demand has required ambitious expansion of the capital's infrastructure.

By 2015, more than 8 million people will travel on Beijing's rail network each day and by 2032 the number of passengers on the new Line 10 alone will surge to 40,000 an hour at peak times.

The first phase of the new line, currently undergoing final checks and due to open fully in July, cost 15.9bn yuan including the cost of its spur to Olympic venues. That equates to 500m yuan a kilometre of track, officials said.

Six workers died last year when a tunnel collapsed during construction.