The commute for millions of people living in and around Beijing is a daily grind that is ever more time-consuming, costly and crowded as residents dodge, push and elbow their way onto buses and subways.
And there is no immediate relief in sight in a city that has more than 21 million residents and is growing fast.
Indeed, expansion over the next 15 years will put the Chinese capital at the center of a new mega-city as it integrates with the port city of Tianjin and neighboring Hebei province, officials say. Current estimates of the population in the combined area is around 110 million.