Seven subway lines will be built in Suzhou by 2020, a nation-level subway construction conference revealed on November 1.

The seven subway lines will crisscross the city, extending a to-tal of 282.2km. In addition, six in-ter-city subway lines will join the network to connect Suzhou with four county-level cities.

Suzhou is the first prefec-ture-level city to have a subway line. Line One began operation on April 28, 2012, having carried 70 million passengers since then. So far the city has received approval to construct four subway lines that will form a network of 165km once completed.

Subway Line Two began test runs on September 21 and will be open to the public on December 28, 2013.

The extension of Line Two and Line Four will be ready to serve passengers in 2016 and 2017 re-spectively. The plan for Line Three has passed an initial exami-nation.

Seventeen Chinese cities have developed subway services, with tracks covering 　a 　total of 2,000km.