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Line 1:
The 2nd northern extension: Bao'an Highway, Youyi Road, Fujin Road.
People's Square now a 3-way interchange (photo from the Line 1 platform):
Line 4:
The entire new loop line:
A few new stations, including an interchange with Line 8:
Line 6:
The route map at Century Avenue.
Inside a Line 6 car (oops, it still says "Shiji Avenue"...)
Line 8:
People's Square platform sign.
South of the Huangxing Road station: Hongkou Stadium, People's Square, south Pudong.
Line 9:
Platform at Jiuting Station.
Guilin Rd Station map.
Other:
Updated ticket price table for Caoxi Rd; and this is only for Line 3!
Ticket-vending machine with new lines:
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 Time to top-out your public transport cards, all RMB 999 folks, Opening Day is upon us! The Shanghai metro system will soon be welcoming into the family "three lines and two segments," as the opening as been nicknamed, consisting of new Lines 6/8/9, the 2nd northern extension of Line 1 and the final stretch of the Line 4 loop line. Thanks to "planning with Chinese characteristics" it is still unclear whether the first day of operation will remain on the original 28 of December, or be pushed back to December 29. Whenever it is, on that day Line 6 will begin shuttling Pudong'ers up and down their side of the river, Line 8 will bring civilization to the northern boonies we call Yangpu, Line 9 will make quarantining those rowdy university students out in Songjiang that much easier, Line 1 will become twice as crowded as it already is, and Line 4 will mess with our sense of direction by abandoning the concept of terminal stations.
(As for the date, rumor has it that certain city officials are unavailable on the 28th, but are looking for an opportunity to make a good impression after a certain "double-fish incident" involving a former Shanghai mayor and his son.)
For all the new stations and trains to be gracing the city soon, there will be a couple notable absences. First, Line 9 will not reach its final planned destination of Yishan Rd, where it would have connected with Lines 3 and 4. Due to delays in construction at the anticipated interchange (again, rumors, this time of unharmonious evictees) the line will only reach Guilin Rd, and buses are being prepared to shuttle passengers directly to Yishan Rd for a "seamless" interchange. Second, the planned Line 3/8 interchange at Hongkou Stadium has been put on hold until Cloud Nine Mall owner Tong Jinquan gets his act in order and finds more funding for his stalled Hongkou Cloud Nine project, through which the interchange was to take place. So when mapping out your December 28 (or 29!) maiden tour of the new metro lines, keep these absences in mind.
Regardless of the date, preparations are being made well in advance. ExploreShanghai has created a 2008 Shanghai Metro MapBeta with new fares and routes; UrbanRail.net has updated its Shanghai maps and line information, and of course the new Metro stations are busy putting up new signs, training staff, installing stores, and making test runs (since the 10th) in preparation for the big day.
Speaking of new signs, Shanghaiist reported last year on concerned city officials ordering all occurrences of "Century" in station names to be replaced with the pinyin "Shiji" This led to the fiasco of the then-new interchange between Lines 2 and 4 at Century Avenue having different English names on the two different platforms! As part of its move to standardize place names in the city, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission Language Office has now asked the Metro company to switch all of its signs back to the original versions.The Language Commission has said that Chinese place names like Beijing, Wulumuqi ("Urumqi") and Xizang ("Tibet") would be spelled using Chinese pinyin, but that generic place names like Century Park could be translated back into the original English.
Watch out for a preview of the new signs from several of the new lines in a subsequent post!
Photo by vampirex.
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 The state media had reported around May of this year that the proposed Shanghai-Hangzhou maglev was canceled. In the report just linked to, it says that the official reason why the thing was canceled was because of health and environmental concerns, while the supposed "real reason" was that residents in the maglev's path were starting a petition. Reading over this report reminds of how this issue has been ping-ponging back and forth for years. We thought perhaps that the ginormous cost of the thing, including some behind-the-scenes bickering between Zhejiang province and Shanghai regarding the division of construction costs, was the final nail in the coffin, but if you think about it, since when can a few petitioners writing letters to their National People's Congress "reps" can hardly hold back the ineluctable forces of progress?
In any case, the maglev has circumvented some of those nasty environmental problems by changing its route to avoid residential buildings and reducing its speed in downtown areas. As for the radiation risk—well, their scientific tests show that there is no radiation impact beyond 3-5 meters, which is good, because that means that none of the folks living ten meters from the maglev will have to worry about the higher risk of getting cancer (we wonder what this means for people sitting IN the trains!). As for noise levels, the current maglev track from Pudong airport to Longyang seems to be at about acceptable international standards.
On the other hand, since the new proposed route is actually a double route, with one track heading south towards Jiaxing and Hangzhou while the other heads towards Hongqiao airport, we wonder what will happen to the people or buildings along the path to Hongqiao.
Photo by HKmPUA.
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 It may only be a spit away by plane, but for those of us too cheap environmentally concerned to fly, getting up to Beijing for the weekend is a *** (despite our love of munching through a bottomless nosebag of sunflower seeds to looped pan-pipe renditions of Celine Dion songs). Which is why we don't go.
So the proposed high-speed line between Shanghai and BJ, which will reportedly cane it along at 350km/h and take less than 5 hours, seemed like another winning idea by the folks at the Ministry of Railways when it was finally approved last year, especially since the success of the new bullet trains .
However, the project is floundering. The original deadline was that catch-all justification for just about any scheme you like, the Beijing Olympics. When it that was clear that target was too ambitious, the 2010 World Expo (which we're sure will be on everyone's lips, just as soon as BeiBei, JingJing and Co. sling their hooks) was set as the deadline. Now after further budgetary quibbles, the date is closer to 2013, according to an AFP report, with the government approving the line's RMB 230 billion ($31 billion) budget in September.
So, with ever-rising construction costs, plus the recent track record (hoho) of high-speed railway projects, it looks like Beijing is going to be ten hours of seed-munching away for us rail-bound cheapskates for the forseeable.
Photo from BBC News
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 Metro news from the local press:
- The case of the young man who was squeezed to death between the metro train and the glass security doors on the Shanghai Stadium Line 4 platform will begin pretrial procedures tomorrow.
- The People's Daily has published an overview of new developments in the Shanghai newspaper industry, including a paragraph highlighting the success of the free commuter paper I-Metro Express (I时代报), the only newspaper to be distributed for free on metro station platforms themselves, as well as its upstart competitor Xianzai Jinbao. Shanghaiist has yet to see a Jinbao, which the article claims is distributed for free at metro station exits. Anybody else spot it?
- Metro stored value card use is up since the institution of the new discount program for bus-metro transfers. Passengers who change from bus to metro within 90 minutes receive a discount of RMB 1 on their second fare. The same discount is causing arguments between bus ticket sellers and passengers who want to wait until they get off the bus to swipe their cards.
- Recently an editorial appeared in the papers asking why the lights have to go out so quickly on metro trains that reach their terminal stations. Even such a pithy complaint has seen a quick response from the metro company, which explains that practice of honking the train's horn was changed to turning off the lights because it is more "civilized."
- The Shanghai Shentong Metro Group has invited the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences to test the air quality in some stations on Line 1 and 2, particularly at the People's Square station. People's Square will see a marked increase in passenger flow at year's end when Line 8 opens.
The above photo is a covert picture of construction on the new interchange hall at People's Square. More photos from site at the Ditiezu BBS.
Cross posted on the Shanghai Public Transportation blog.
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- You may have noticed the above special green signs appearing on new exit gates near subway station exit stiles. What do they mean? Starting on Oct 19, passengers over 70 years of age carrying a social security card with proof of age can ride Shanghai public transportation (bus and metro) for free during off-peak hours. By the end of the year, the Metro company plans to install automatic card readers to quicken the entry process for these senior citizens, who can now pass through the newly installed exit gates. This is all part of a plan to improve service to the city's elder residents.
- Metro Operations is bringing in army communications specialists to train Line 8 staff to "put a smile in their voice". Line 8 is set to open by the end of this year.
- Be careful swiping your stored-value card when you exit a metro station; starting from the 27th of October, a new Metro Operations rule comes into effect declaring that passengers who did not swipe on their way out and need their card to be reset the next time they hope to ride the subway will need to pay the maximum fare of RMB 9 to get their card cleared.
- The Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Company is submitting a joint bid with the Guangzhou Metro to build a subway line for the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, located just north of the Russian border with Kazakhstan.
- China Daily tells us that "Super subway spurs underground love" when speeddating.com founder Tang Feng arranges for Shanghai white-collars to meet up in subway stations for speed-matchmaking parties. These daily commuters enjoy a special attachment to and resonance with the Shanghai subway system and feel like they can form a special connection with fellow commuters in the familiar setting.
Cross-posted on the Shanghai Public Transportation blog
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- You may have noticed the above special green signs appearing on new exit gates near subway station exit stiles. What do they mean? Starting on Oct 19, passengers over 70 years of age carrying a social security card with proof of age can ride Shanghai public transportation (bus and metro) for free during off-peak hours. By the end of the year, the Metro company plans to install automatic card readers to quicken the entry process for these senior citizens, who can now pass through the newly installed exit gates. This is all part of a plan to improve service to the city's elder residents.
- Metro Operations is bringing in army communications specialists to train Line 8 staff to "put a smile in their voice". Line 8 is set to open by the end of this year.
- Be careful swiping your stored-value card when you exit a metro station; starting from the 27th of October, a new Metro Operations rule comes into effect declaring that passengers who did not swipe on their way out and need their card to be reset the next time they hope to ride the subway will need to pay the maximum fare of RMB 9 to get their card cleared.
- The Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Company is submitting a joint bid with the Guangzhou Metro to build a subway line for the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, located just north of the Russian border with Kazakhstan.
- China Daily tells us that "Super subway spurs underground love" when speeddating.com founder Tang Feng arranges for Shanghai white-collars to meet up in subway stations for speed-matchmaking parties. These daily commuters enjoy a special attachment to and resonance with the Shanghai subway system and feel like they can form a special connection with fellow commuters in the familiar setting.
Cross-posted on the Shanghai Public Transportation blog
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 In the local press recently:
- By year's end, the Zhongshan Park Line 2/3/4 interchange station's single intra-station passageway between the Line 2 and Line 3/4 platforms will be joined by a new passageway added to relieve passenger congestion. Since the opening of the Line 2 extension, passenger traffic on Lines 2 and 3 has been grown markedly and the pedestrian traffic during rush hours is almost unbearable. The new passageway will be located on the south side of the station, running past the bookstore and convenience store. The current passageway at that spot is a station exit, but also branches off into a tunnel under Kaixuan Rd to the Line 3/4 station entrance. Has anyone seen evidence of construction going on there?
- Seventeen bus lines that stop at Lujiazui are being rerouted due to construction in the area. The 17 lines will be distributed between the Shanghai Aquarium, the bus stop near the Pearl Tower, and across the traffic circle at the corner of Lujiazui Rd and Fenghe Rd. The article mentions that related government officials predict a decrease in the number of passengers switching between the Metro and bus systems at Lujiazui after the move; perhaps this is serving the dual-purpose of also being a stop-gap move to shift passengers from overloaded the Lujiazui station to the Dongchang Rd station. It's also possible that the construction in the article is related to the oft rumored project of connecting several of Lujiazui's office towers with downtown-Hong-Kong-style above-street-level walkways.
Cross-posted at the Shanghai Public Transportation weblog.
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 News tidbits from the public transportation world:
- Maglev hours are being extended to match the operating hours of the Metro Line 2, opening at 6:45am and closing at 9:30pm. In 2005 the high-speed train extended its hours in a bid to snag more passengers; this time the move comes as it rides a new wave of popularity.
- Shanghai's Dazhong Taxi is following the city of Beijing's footsteps and declaring all of its taxis to be "smoke-free zones". The ban on smoking is intended to cut down on drivers lighting up, more than on passengers. Look for brand new "No Smoking" stickers on the plastic partitions in the green taxis around town.
- Google Labs China released a public transportation route search last month, covering the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Hangzhou. This puts them in competition with Baidu and DDmap, producers of the two leading Chinese bus route search tools on the net.
- Following the week-long National Day holiday, the Shanghai Shentong Metro company has pulled all ten Bombardier-manufactured trains off of Line 1 in anticipation of the opening of Line 9 by the end of this year. According to company spokespersons, the trains will not be missed because of the continued addition of refitted 8-car trains to Line 1. Line 9 will run from Songjiang to Guiling Rd, continuing through Xujiahui and into Pudong when phase two is completed in 2008.
Cross-posted at the Shanghai Public Transportation weblog.
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 Perhaps you have noticed that Shanghai taxi drivers are wearing orange T-shirts these days. They are for the Special Olympics (which, we assume, local cabbies are more interested in than the Women's World Cup?) and on the back we're pretty sure it says "I Know I Can," which is the event's slogan. We asked one of our drivers today if he liked being able to wear a T-shirt instead of the usual cabbie outfit (some kind of white collared shirt). He said: "No, it's not really more comfortable. They only give us one shirt, and we have to wear it for nine days. If we forget to wash it ..."
The shirts come off October 12. Maybe on the 11th you can ask a cabbie to trade T-shirts with you like they do after World Cup matches (men's ones). We suggest washing before wearing.
More unspectacular camera phone pics after the jump.
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 If, like us, you're stuck in Shanghai over the National Day holiday (hey, somebody's gotta give everyone else stuck in town something to read and entertain themselves with, right?), we suggest you stay right at home. Because if you haven't been around during any Golden Week, you won't know what a nightmare it is going to be out there.
And the Shanghai Metro is already gearing itself up for a record National Day holiday season, with about 1.2 million extra tickets already printed.
Shanghai Daily has some interesting figures for us:
- The maximum daily turnover of Metro Lines 1, 2, 3, and 4 is expected to surpass 2.8 million people, according to the management, while the daily average will be more than 2.2 million for the holiday starting on October 1.
- The Metro company said the city is seeing a rapidly growing number in subway turnover in recent months.During the first eight months of this year, daily turnover of the four lines in service reached 2.15 million, a record and an increase of 25.6 percent on the same period last year.
- The third quarter of the year sees the most considerable growth as 2.18 million riders on average travelled by the network, jumping 2.7 percent from the second quarter this year and 26 percent from the same quarter a year ago.
Thanks, but it just makes us wanna stay home all the more. Anybody wanna pop by for dinner and DVDs?
Photo from it aint me
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 Not content with making cars and computers for the world, China is now on to its next big thing -- aircraft. The long-awaited ARJ-21 (pictured here) is China's very first homegrown commercial aircraft and has been launched amid much fanfare by the aircraft maker AVIC I. Now only a name is lacking, and if you can come up with a creative Chinese name of between two and four Chinese characters before September 28, RMB50,000 will be yours! (Sorry apparently English names are worth nothing).
The state-owned AVIC I aims to rival other makers of smaller passenger jets such as Canada's Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer, and a BusinessWeek report says the ARJ-21 is expected to grab up to "60 percent of the domestic market for mid-size regional airliners over the next 20 years". We have no doubt that will swiftly come to pass since almost all airlines in China are state-owned, but lest you think the China-made jets will only have a market domestically, AVIC I has already delivered the first two of 15 MA60 jets (another of its planes which can seat 50-60 passengers) to Indonesia's Merpati Nusantara Airlines. Nine MA60s have also been delivered to Zimbabwe, Laos, Zambia and the Republic of Congo. A humble beginning perhaps, but who knows where they'll go next!
In other aviation news
1. Change is in the air. In the first acquisition in one of the big three Chinese carriers by a foreign airline, Singapore Airlines and its parent Temasek Holdings will pay about US$930 million for a combined 24% stake in China Eastern. The deal will give China Eastern "much-needed cash and access to a global network, while Singapore Airlines will get a foothold in China's growing market".
2. And even as Air China announced its first half net profit has more than tripled from a year earlier, its President Cai Jianjiang has made comments that it will not preclude the possibility of merging with rivals such as China Southern. In light of recent changes in the domestic aviation market, one wonders how passengers like you and me will benefit from it all. The next thing we know, China Eastern will announce a merger with Shanghai Airlines!
3. And for those of you who have been frustrated by your attempts to use your frequent flyer miles in China, you will be happy to know that Air China and Shanghai Airlines will be joining the Star Alliance and China Southern Airlines is due to join SkyTeam later this year!
Related links
BusinessWeek: China soliciting names for homemade jet
China Daily: Indonesian airline awaits Chinese planes
China.org.cn: Air Travel Trend Opens Up Skies for AVIC I
Wall Street Journal: China Airline Deal Is Estimated At $930 Million
AP: Air China Says 1H Net Profit Up 3-Fold
Shanghaiist: Why have air ticket prices gone up?
FlightGlobal.com: China's growth challenge
Picture of ARJ-21 jet from xmyzl.com
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 The free Metro Express commuter paper has a big front-page spread today on the People's Square metro interchange make-over. The headline announces that "People's Square Three Line Interchange Hall To Open By Year's End", which is old news to those who have been following the progress of the new metro Line 8. Instead, the reason for the story being published today is that the Shanghai Rail Transport Construction Headquarters just released a bunch of numbers on the new station, as well as a map of the planned station layout. Among the numbers:
- 3 subway lines (Lines 1, 2 and 8)
- over 8000 square meters (bigger than a standard soccer field)
- 2 underground levels
- able to handle 76,400 passengers per hour compared to the current 30,000 and the predicted 45,000
- average transit distance of 70 meters (half the current average)
- 1 control room to govern the entire station (currently, Line 1 and Line 2 have separate control rooms)
- 5 doors from Line 1 to the transfer hall
- 10 doors from Line 2 to the transfer hall
- a 17-meter wide Grand-Gateway-style connecting stairway to the Line 8 platform, including 6 (six!) adjacent escalators, 3 in each direction.
The transfer hall has a big open space facing the sky, and may cause a sense of deja vu when the "underground city and garden" metro station servicing the World Expo grounds is opened to the public.
Frequent commuters are looking forward to the opening of the transfer hall as transfers between Line 1 and 2 are becoming increasingly crowded. A reporter from the Shanghai Morning Post noted in a recent article that more and more passengers are breaking the rules regarding which route to use when transferring at People's Square (ie 1→2 use the long passage, 2→1 use the short passage with the escalators). The rules were instituted a few years ago as foot traffic increased so as to avoid passenger congestion. If you've been through there, though, you know that 80% of the time simply walking past the posted station attendant in the wrong direction will get you nothing more than a glance.
Also, at the bottom of the Metro Express front page are two smaller articles also on public transportation topics. The first says that the Shanghai Metro company and the company that runs the LCD screens on the train cars are looking to add newscasts and weather reports to the current programming. The other article says that public transportation discounts for students and seniors will probably be in form of RMB 1 off ticket prices for A/C buses and the metro. According to the Transportation Authority, the software upgrades necessary to institute the discount were installed when the software for the bus transfer discount program was installed earlier this year.
This post was cross-posted at the Shanghai Public Transportation weblog.
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From James of ISpyShanghai.com, who apparently is in town working on Pudong Airport's new Terminal which is slated to open in early 2008:
Not to get all airport-geek on you, but it pretty much looks like the terminal at Incheon, Korea. Massive glass walls at either end to let in light, and more light coming in through the ceiling. It feels much bigger and cooler than the old terminal, but that could be because there aren’t thousands of people standing around eating cup noodles.
No shops or anything in there yet of course, but the ceiling and floor look finished, loads of check-in desks are almost ready to go, and there’s light and a/c all over the place. The usual rigorous Chinese quality control is being applied to the English signage.
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 If you've been still wondering how the woman who rammed her bike into the bus actually managed to do it, this one takes the cake! Today's Shanghai Daily tells us of a truck that got stuck under a bridge while trying to force its way through on Songxing Road in Baoshan District yesterday at 7pm. In fact:
Police said the driver knew the crane bases on his truck were taller than the bridge, but he still decided to "try his luck." Once the truck got stuck, the driver sped up to force his way out instead of backing out, police said.
Shanghaiist has insider news that a group of researchers that have spent the last five years trying to prove a correlation between the intelligence level of drivers and the size of their vehicles have all committed harakiri on hearing of yesterday's accident. There are also rumours that the transport authority will soon introduce IQ tests for all would-be drivers.
Back at the accident scene, it was not until 11pm that the truck was finally pulled out. The fire department had to cut off the steel bases and remove air from the truck's tyres to get it out.
Bridge specialists have also determined that the truck moved the section of the bridge for bicycles by about 10 cm, and a 50-cm long crack could be seen on one of the bridge's concrete piers. Would someone please remind us never to travel in that part of town because just yesterday, a bridge also collapsed in Hunan, killing 20 people? Prior to this, we thought defective bridges only existed in certain parts of the world.
Wait, there's more. Shanghai Daily says residents in the neighbourhood have said that this is "not the first time trucks carrying goods higher than the limit has rushed through the underpass". Responding with a classic tai-chi move called "push-the-blame-asana", drivers complained to traffic police that "signs indicating height restrictions for the bridge were in the wrong places, including one under the bridge".
Related links
Shanghaiist: Woman rams bike into bus
Shanghai Daily: Truck tries to force way under bridge, gets stuck
China Daily: Central China bridge collapse kills 20, 46 missing
Photo from Shanghai Daily.
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