Light Rail

We went to into Tianjin on the weekend. How it works, is that we live in TEDA, which stands for Tianjin Economic Development Area. This is a special, maybe more industrialized area, that is near Tianjin. Our little suburb is probably about 25 or 30 km or so from the main city of Tianjin. To get into the city, we need to take the BMT light rail system. It's quite similar to Skytrain, in that it runs electrically on rails that are raised above ground. A couple of differences. Whereas the Skytrain in Vancouver gets its power, I assume, from the tracks somehow, the BMT train gets its power from overhead power lines. Another difference is the inside of the train. Since this is more of a commuter train than a "subway" style train, the inside is very commuter train. Nice, air conditioned, comfy seats, spacious. It's about a twenty minute walk from our apartment to the Qingwei station (Qingwei is the name of the rail line in Chinese). Once we get there, it costs about 90 cents Canadian to take the train. The amount of money depends on how far you want to go. In our case, our stop is the second from the end, and we were going right to the other end, so it was the full price. If you go to somewhere closer, it can cost as little as 2 RMB, or about 30 cents. The next day, we went again, to another suburb called Tangu, which is about 5 km away, and that was a 2 RMB ride.

The Qingwei station near our apartment is in the middle of a nice park and man-made lagoon. You can see some pictures of it.