"I think the bullet train system is not stable and may break down in extreme weather conditions, " said Professor Zhao Jian, a transportation expert with Beijing Jiaotong University.

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Soon, the sharp winter wind in Beijing was testing my commitment to transportation al fresco.

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The growth of road freight and the more widespread use of private vehicles have made transportation the second area of priority for Beijing's energy conservationists.

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Beijing Enterprises, which is involved in everything from transportation infrastructure to the city's McDonald's franchise, is on most analysts' wish list, but its shares are already sky high.

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Even so, they face a three-year wait for a place in the Jingyuan Road housing project in Beijing's outer Shijingshan district, far away from any public transportation.

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As far as the preferred mode of public transportation goes, however, Tsao belongs to a growing number of Beijing residents who are opting for the slower bus to the supposedly far more efficient subway.

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"In less than a decade, we constructed more high-speed rail lines than what it took Japan and Europe 40 years to build, " said Zhao Jian, an economics professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and one of the country's leading experts on rail transportation.

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Gerald Ollivier, a senior infrastructure specialist at the World Bank in Beijing, pointed out that trains in China are still by far one of the safest means of transportation.

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The government is massively upgrading the public transportation network (see a map of the planned subway expansion) as part of this expansion of Greater Beijing.

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