Official announcement! The nation's first metropolitan area that realizes subway access covering all its affiliated cities is coming.

As the first national-level metropolitan area in the central and western regions approved by the national authorities, the Chengdu Metropolitan Area has clarified its latest targets for the next five years.

A few days ago, the *"15th Five-Year Plan" Integrated Urban Development Plan of Chengdu Metropolitan Area* was officially released. The plan proposes that by 2030, the gross domestic product of the Chengdu Metropolitan Area will strive to reach 3.95 trillion yuan, and the total GDP of the four cities of Chengdu, Deyang, Meishan and Ziyang will strive to reach 4.1 trillion yuan across their entire administrative areas.

In terms of transportation construction, the plan clearly states that the Chengdu-Meishan line and Chengdu-Deyang line of suburban railways will be completed. This means that following the official operation of the Chengdu-Ziyang line in September 2024, Meishan and Deyang will also step into a de facto "metro era".

Accordingly, the Chengdu Metropolitan Area will become the first metropolitan area in China that has de facto achieved "metro access in every city under its jurisdiction".

01

In fact, as early as last year, public reports pointed out that the S5 Chengdu-Meishan line and S11 Chengdu-Deyang line of Chengdu suburban railways, which started construction in 2022 and 2023 respectively, are under accelerated construction, and are expected to be fully put into operation by 2027.

By then, the Chengdu Metropolitan Area will become the first metropolitan area in China where suburban railways are in operation from the central city to all regional sub-central cities.

Public information shows that by July this year, 99.8% of the total shield tunneling work on the Chengdu-Deyang line has been completed, the "breakthrough through tunnel" is imminent, and 14.1 kilometers of track laying has been finished. For the Chengdu-Meishan line, the main civil structure construction of all 12 stations has been completed, the shield tunneling progress has reached 100%, and 57% of the track laying has been finished.

At this pace, the four cities in the Chengdu Metropolitan Area will soon achieve full coverage of suburban railways smoothly, and the metropolitan area on the track will take real shape, stepping into the real era of "track-based urban integration".

It is worth noting that the railways mentioned here are suburban railways, but they are actually "quasi-metro". For example, the S3 Chengdu-Ziyang line that opened earlier connects Chengdu Tianfu International Airport and the urban area of Ziyang, and is integrated into the unified operation of Chengdu Metro network, making the travel time from Ziyang to Chengdu Tianfu International Airport only 15 minutes.

Data shows that as the first cross-administrative rail transit line in Sichuan, the passenger flow of the Chengdu-Ziyang line has exceeded 10 million person-times less than one year after its opening.

With the Deyang line and Meishan line also connected to the Chengdu Metro network, the operational scale of Chengdu's rail transit network will continue to expand. This will also provide strong support for achieving the goal of "completely eliminating cross-regional travel barriers, with the proportion of the population that has 1-hour commuting conditions exceeding 75%".

Why can the Chengdu Metropolitan Area take the lead in realizing full coverage of rail transit? The reason is that in addition to the close geographical connection between the four cities, it is also related to the early planning and high efficiency of implementation initiation.

For example, as early as 2021, the relevant lines were included in the *Multi-level Rail Transit Plan for Chengdu-Chongqing Twin City Economic Circle*, which can be said to have seized the last window period. Under the current background that the overall rail transit construction is cooling down, the access threshold for suburban railway construction has been significantly raised.

In this regard, across the country, there will not be many metropolitan areas that can realize "metro access in every city under its jurisdiction". At present, the operational mileage of Chengdu's rail transit has exceeded 700 kilometers, ranking second only to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou across China.

On this basis, the expansion of the suburban rail transit network will further optimize the structure of Chengdu's rail transit network, bringing radiating benefits to the entire metropolitan area.

It is worth noting that in addition to the Chengdu-Meishan line and Chengdu-Deyang line, the plan also proposes: newly build the Qingbaijiang-Jintang Line in Chengdu, the special railway line for Wangyang Logistics Park in Meishan and other projects; conduct research and demonstration on the first phase project of Chengdu Outer Ring Railway (Chengdu Metropolitan Area Ring Railway), and the Renshou Branch Line of the Chengdu-Meishan suburban railway.

02

Transportation integration is an important foundation for the integrated development of metropolitan areas.

In addition to rail transit, the plan also clarifies two other goals: strive to make the air passenger throughput exceed 100 million person-times; accelerate the promotion of the second-phase project of Tianfu International Airport, and support the building of an all-round gateway composite international aviation hub.

This means that the aviation capacity of the Chengdu Metropolitan Area will also rise to a new level.

While improving the transportation network, the plan also proposes that Chengdu should be optimized and strengthened as the core polar city driving high-quality development. At the same time, the construction of coordinated and supportive sub-central cities will be accelerated, promoting Deyang, Meishan and Ziyang to undertake Chengdu's industrial transfer, spillover of non-core functions and population dispersal from the central urban area in accordance with local conditions.

This indicates that in terms of industrial and population layout, the Chengdu Metropolitan Area will further optimize collaboration instead of forming a single-center agglomeration.

In addition to Chengdu, the latest positioning of the three other sub-central cities in the metropolitan area is also clarified: support Deyang to rely on the Chengdu-Deyang Port-adjacent Economic Industrial Belt to strengthen linkage with the Chengdu International Railway Port Economic Development Zone, jointly build a high-end energy equipment manufacturing industrial cluster, and build a high-level high-end equipment science and technology city; support Meishan to rely on the Chengdu-Meishan High-tech Industrial Belt to jointly build Tianfu New Area to gather innovation resources collaboratively, deeply develop the three 100-billion-yuan industries of lithium battery, photovoltaic and new chemical materials, and accelerate the construction of an emerging city with high-quality development in a modern metropolitan area;

Support Ziyang to rely on the Chengdu-Ziyang Airport-adjacent Economic Industrial Belt to strengthen linkage with Chengdu Eastern New Area, nurture and expand emerging industries such as aerospace industry, digital intelligence industry, clean energy and new materials, and accelerate the construction of a modern industrial new city in the metropolitan area.

On the above basis, the plan clarifies that by 2030, the gross domestic product of the Chengdu Metropolitan Area will strive to reach 3.95 trillion yuan, and the total GDP of the four cities of Chengdu, Deyang, Meishan and Ziyang will strive to reach 4.1 trillion yuan across their entire administrative areas.

In 2025, the GDP of the Chengdu Metropolitan Area exceeded 3 trillion yuan, reaching 31310.2 billion yuan, accounting for 46.3% of the province's total economic output, with a permanent resident population of more than 30 million. That is to say, the Chengdu Metropolitan Area contributed nearly half of the province's total economic output with the strength of "one circle", whose importance and weight are self-evident.

In fact, from a national perspective, for most provinces, metropolitan areas will increasingly become the core of development. For example, by 2025, the total economic output of the Xi'an Metropolitan Area reached 1.75 trillion yuan, accounting for 47.8% of the province's total GDP.

Against this background, metropolitan areas will also become the main battlefield of regional competition.

At present, 21 national-level metropolitan areas have been approved across China, but there are great differences in the development foundations of different metropolitan areas.

According to the relevant report released last year by the Institute for China's New Urbanization of Tsinghua University: The Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Guangzhou metropolitan areas belong to the first-tier all-round comprehensive metropolitan areas, with solid development foundation, excellent quality and efficiency, and leading level of integrated urban development. The Chengdu, Nanjing and Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan metropolitan areas belong to the second tier, which are characteristic development metropolitan areas, with a steady overall development trend and distinct competitive advantages in key fields.

The third tier is the potential development metropolitan areas, including Wuhan, Xi'an, Xiamen-Zhangzhou-Quanzhou, Fuzhou, Qingdao, Jinan, Hefei, Zhengzhou, Chongqing and Shijiazhuang. In the future, the number of national metropolitan areas will expand to 27, basically forming a pattern of "one metropolitan area for each province".

The era of metropolitan areas is coming at an accelerated pace.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Western City Story", written by Xibu Jun, and published with authorization by 36Kr.