By Li Yanhui

In order to deal with overcrowding, the Beijing Subway Company has announced plans to imple-ment new measures to better control and limit passenger flow.

Currently, many major Beijing subway lines are operating at over 120 percent capacity, accord-ing to the Beijing Times Sunday.

Therefore, to insure passengers' safety and the maintenance of normal subway operations during rush hours, the Beijing Subway Company announced Friday that it would put up fences and other barriers to slow passengers' entry into some stations and would create channels through which passengers could be diverted during peak flow times, the Beijing Times reported Sunday.

Some subways will also skip certain stations during rush hour to prevent overcrowding in the train cars.

The measures primarily will be implemented on subway lines 1, 5, 13 and the Batong line.

Last week, the 12 subway lines under the Beijing Subway Company's management transported about 5.3 million passengers per day, a 5 percent increase compared with the days before Spring Festival.

"You can patiently wait for a seat at the terminal of Line 5, at Tiantongyuanbei Station, but you'd better find a better position before you arrive at your destination, as the train gets very crowded during the next several stations," a daily subway commuter named Guo Sujuan told the Global Times Sunday.

Fences were installed at Tiantongyuanbei Station as early as 2009, and walking into the station through the winding corral usually takes two or three minutes, according to Guo.

However, so many passengers get on at the terminus that only a few more people can board each car at additional stations, Guo said.

When it opened in October 2007, subway Line 5 was dubbed Beijing's "grand north-south chan-nel" and "underground transport artery" by the media.

But only two years later, management had to start installing fences to control passenger flow, Xinhua reported in December 2009.