The Beijing municipal government thought it's finally about time to slash the 3-5 yuan price tag off the local subway system. After all, the Olympics is less than 52 weeks away and the smog that engulfs Beijing every day isn't going away.
The result: at least a 33% discount on a ticket. All one-way tickets will now cost only 2 yuan. But compare that to Shanghai (3-9 yuan), Shenzhen (2-4 yuan) and Guangzhou (2-12 yuan) metros. It's actually not that much cheaper, or at least not nearly cheap enough for the mid/upper class to squeeze themselves in with everyone else on their way to work every day.
As I briefly mentioned above, one of the main reasons that Beijing is so eager to promote this discount, as well as a new metro line to be unveiled on Oct. 7th, is due to the fact that pollution greatly degrades the city's image, especially if seen by millions of tourists ahead of the Olympics next summer.
Public transport is therefore highly recommended by the state.
Back in August, the government implemented a trial car ban in another attempt to battle pollution. Apparently that worked better, with more than a 40% cut in car emissions. Yet even then a black fog continued to hang over Beijing like a drape. Read about what The Guardian said about Beijing back in 2005.
Is there no hope at all of curbing pollution?
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