BEIJING, July 21 – Beijing opened three new subway lines on Saturday to facilitate better transportation during the upcoming Olympics. The opening of the new metro lines represents yet another effort to combat the notoriously polluted air of the capital before the Games start in August.

The city has already enacted numerous efforts as to ease traffic issues. For example, a new law also went into effect Sunday that restricts driving private cars to alternate days through an odd- and even-numbered license plate system. Special Olympic road lanes, too, have been designated for the use of vehicles serving the Games. Measures such as these are crucial when a city has 3.3 million vehicles, increasing by over a 1,000 daily.

Together, the airport express, Line 10, and the Olympic Line cost RMB22.3 billion to build and will increase subway capacity to 800,000 passengers per day. Beijing now has eight subway lines, totaling 200 kilometers of track.

The new airport express links downtown to the huge new international airport’s Terminal 3 which opened earlier this year and also to Terminal 2, the other international center of the airport. With only four stops on the whole line, passengers can choose to continue their journey from the Dongzhimen and Sanyuanqiao stops in the city.

As construction on Line 10 had finished much earlier this year, there was great anticipation surrounding its opening, especially as it greatly reduces the need for line transfers for many commuters. Passing through the capital’s Central Business District, as well as Guomao in the southeast and the “Chinese Silicon Valley,” Zhongguancun, trains on Line 10 run at an average interval of 3.5 minutes.

Operations have not started for the Olympic line yet as the capital’s traffic authorities are still determining its running schedule.

Test runs of the two newly operating lines this weekend had no apparent hitches. Zhou Zhengyu, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Committee of Communications has sidestepped questioning about whether there would be enough time to fix any problems that may rise before the Games open on August 8th. He also did not comment on what had delayed the opening of the two lines before this past weekend.

For the most part though, Beijing has steered clear of infrastructure issues that Athens, the last Olympic host faced, even garnering praise from the International Olympic Committee for finishing venue construction both on time and early.