(Yicai) Oct. 17 -- The new 800 kilometers of subway lines built in major Chinese cities last year only increased the covered commuting area by 1 percent.

The commute efficiency per unit of new metro lines was cut by half last year from the previous one, according to the "2024 Commuting Monitoring Report of Major Cities in China" report released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Developmen's Urban Transport Infrastructure Monitoring and Governance Laboratory and the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design today.

Metro services are an important support for commuting in large cities. The commuting space radius of 41 Chinese cities has increased over the past five years, with that in Shanghai being the most significant, according to the report, which monitors 45 major cities.

"Every CNY430,000 (USD60,370) invested in rail construction can only cover one more person in terms of subway commuting," Fu Lingfeng, the person in charge of the report and director of the Data Application and Innovation Center of CAUPD's urban transportation branch, told Yicai.

The proportion of people commuting more than 25 km one-way in the monitored cities reached 8 percent last year, equal to more than 8 million people. Beijing, the city with the largest extreme commuting population, or those who travel 90 minutes or more each way, saw more than 28 percent of citizens travel over an hour, while the ratio in Shanghai, Chongqing, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Qingdao was over 15 percent.

"Beijing lacks fast subways, and the commuting efficiency for more than 20 km was significantly lower than that of Shenzhen and Guangzhou," said Zhao Yixin, director general of the urban transportation branch. Long-distance commuting in the capital of China needs to improve urgently, Zhao noted.

The total area covered by metro lines in the 45 monitored cities exceeded 10,000 km as of the end of last year. However, only one-fifth of commuters could work and live within 800 meters of a station, which is considered convenient commuting.

The metro operating distance of 14 Chinese megacities became longer last year, but the proportion of such commuting coverage rose in only nine of them from a year earlier, Zhao noted. Shenzhen at 35 percent, Chengdu at 34 percent, Wuhan at 33 percent, and Guangzhou at 31 percent were the four with the highest ratios of metro commuting coverage, but failed to improve through new lines last year, Zhao said.

Serving urban commuters and improving commuting efficiency are the fundamental requirements for building metro lines, Zhao pointed out. There is a greater focus on cost-effectiveness with the transition from rapid construction to operation, Zhao noted.

Editor: Martin Kadiev