It is of necessity that I take the 103, as the train station is a fair walk from my home for my early morning bones. As cheap and frequent as both forms of transport are, journeys can often result in a tense affair. My colleague from Britain refuses to take public transport, settling for his bicycle or taxi. Always. He seems less stressed than me. Hmmm…

A taxi to work is out of the question for me. Where the traffic jostles and edges like prowling wild animals, the bus, I feel, triumphs. It's bigger, uglier, and noisier. It wields the colossal power of an elephant. Sometimes I brave the subway, often just to experience some close human contact because, perversely, I like to feel as if I'm part of a cattle herd. But the bus cuts the mustard. Often I poke an eye through the bits of bodies on board and scoff at the air-conditioned cabs. Imagine having to squirm in all that space on the back seat, low down besides the invading trample of the buses tires.

I traveled on the subway on the first day of issue of the new tickets and the opening of the corresponding machines. It was a public holiday so perhaps there was less manic hustle than usual--but it was rather amusing to see the typically hyper rat race approaching the new barriers cautiously, me included. The things look like they pack a punch if they ever malfunction. Nevertheless, it's good to see improvements made to the transport system here. An improvement in British rail networks means a train has arrived on time, or a seat has not been vandalized.

Now we just need the new subway lines to open that are printed on the back of the fancy new tickets. That might go someway to alleviate the free-for-all rugby scrum of the daily 103 passage to work.

The writer is British and lives and works in Beijing