The Horror of Xizhimen Subway Station

Everyday I commute to work on the subway and I have to transfer from Line 13 to Line 2. Normally a transfer is an unpleasant part of the subway, exasperating but not too horrific. However, Xizhimen station is not a normal transfer station, and its ease of transfer is clearly on the ‘horrific’ side of things. It’s pretty bad. Every time I go through the station I want to pull my hair out and maim the management behind the station. You see the reason the station drives me crazy so much is not really because the transfer is bad, its because it could be so much better with minimal work. The infrastructure is there, so why have there not been any changes?

Let me explain through a series of photos (these will have to wait until I get home) how you are supposed to transfer from Line 13 to Line 2. Line 13 is an elevated line, and Line 2 is underground. When I first came to Beijing they were changing parts of Xizhimen station to improve the transfer and to add another line to the station, Line 4 (which I don’t use very often). While they were building a corridor to transfer from Line 2 to Line 13 (and presumably vise-versa), they built a ‘temporary’ way to transfer. Temporary is in quotations because they still use this transfer route! The temporary route takes one outside of the raised portion of the station, down a sidewalk and into underground section. The sidewalk area has been fenced off so people from the street can’t sneak on. It is very slow and, and they have inexplicably built what I like to call a ‘cattle corall’ for everyone to walk through to make it even slower.

Before the indoor corridor was completed, passengers transferring in both directions (13 to 2, 2 to 13) had to use this outdoor abomination, and it was very slow going indeed. Presumably, with the completion of the corridor, the outdoor transfer would be abandoned. It has not been! Half of the corridor is used for Line 2 to Line 13 passengers, while the other half is not even used! It sits empty. Line 13 to Line 2 passengers must still use the nightmarish outdoor transfer. Why, why, why? I would love to have a good talking to with the sadistic managers of the station to hear why perfectly good infrastructure sits unused while passengers are subject to daily torment.

I have however found a way to prevent myself from being subjected to such daily pain. I now jump over a barrier in the raised part of the station to go use the corridor to transfer from Line 13 to Line 2. No one seems to care that I do this, and it makes my day so much better!