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The Shanghai Metro is the world’s largest metro system, and so it was about time we made an Explained video on it! Enjoy, and I hope you learn something about this marvellous metro.
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Ever wondered why your city’s transit just doesn’t seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
46 Comments
Thanks for all the kind comments everyone! Shanghai has a very impressive system!
What Chinese city do you think I should cover next?
I've done some digging about the maglev line in Shanghai. Originally the maglev line was meant to go through the entire city connecting at least Hongqiao and Pudong airport, and at least one station in downtown shanghai (basically the area where Nanjing East/West road is mentioned in the video). It was also originally designed to have the system to potentially connect to other cities near Shanghai. The problem arose when residence that lived around the proposed stations started protesting against the construction due to pseudoscience claiming that the magnetic field from the maglev would make people sick (Longyang road, where the Maglev end today back then was surrounded by farmland, as what I saw in 2006 as a child), and another legitimate concern about noise pollution. Though the protests were pretty detrimental to the project, the nail in the coffin was a whole bunch of municipal/national politics that was going on around the maglev that made the project short of its potential.
Update: The maglev was also loosing a tremendous amount of money every year (no information on its finances today though), meanwhile the Shanghai metro is actually one of the few metro systems around the world that actually makes a slight profit due to the shear amount of ridership every day.
Over the years, at least as far as I was doing research into this in 2019, many proposals of reviving the original plan has been supported by a lot of people and the government, but to no avail till today. Mostly because the role of the original, complete Maglev has been almost replaced by the expansive metro system already available. It is currently being extended into Terminal 3 of the Pudong Airport, but other potential extensions are still on the drawing board like in the past decade, though it's slowly making progress.
Personally I've actually tested the time it takes for me to commute in the city, in some places it really is way cheaper to ride on the subway than getting a taxi. Not necessary that you'd get to a place faster, but you'd be saving a lot of money just by spending an extra 30 minutes as an example.
PS: Apparently if you use the Shanghai public transportation card OR show your boarding pass from your flight, you'd get a 20% (or 10 yuan) discount on the maglev
Great video . More China Metro video's would be great , India also and Iran which is not well known for metros but has several.
Just as a word of advice to prospective riders of the maglev: there's a schedule for when it operates at full speed. Otherwise it reaches 300 kph max (probably cost saving, since it's pretty expensive for "just" an airport line). I overlooked that and was quite disappointed 😅
TTC with 4 lines 🤡
I'm going to be using tjis metro extensively in the next few months…
i lived in shanghai for around 15 years now, and as for the security part, most of the time they don't do it. It is conducted on random person and especially in peak hour, the security officers cant be bothered enough
There's no skyscrapers on the Bund.
Chongming line is going to be tunnelled because it stands in the way towards the container port in waigaoqiao. building a bridge would be more difficult and costly due to height clearance and ship movements.
thanks for the video! i live in toronto but used to live in china (before hsr and metros really took off in china). recently went back and im not sure how ill cope with the ttc when asian cities are building more lines than we have ever planned
Do Guangzhou next! There's also potential for 4 different cities to have their metros connected up: Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, and Dongguan. They're all right there next to each other at the Pearl River Delta. That should be a fun video.
If you add suburban railway and satellite city metros, then it would probably be more than 5000 kilometers
so excited to see what you have stored for this video
Shanghai has one of the best metro system in the world. Imo better than Tokyo and Hong Kong even.
Lived in Shagnhai till 22 yrs old and I've witnessed them building up the metro system bit by bit – absoutely stunning city planning. My house is in the rural area of Shanghai (relatively close to PVG) and had 0 metro lines 2 years back. Now it's within reach of 2 different lines easily with a 10 min bike ride. If I were to take a taxi to Honqiao railway station it would take me ~60-80 mins with traffic & it's actually almost the same while doing it via metro systems but pricing wise it's prob 70-80 RMB in comparison to 5 RMB 😱
It's truly a massive system, which works so well that it serves to highlight just how much of a pointless white elephant the maglev line is. Its sole purpose seems to be so that tourists can tell their friends back home that they rode on a maglev train.
Do you have any plans on a Prague transportation video? I think there could be many interesting things to talk about while not needing to focus only on the metro
I've been watching you for months now and I appreciate your passion on sharing information and opinions about different railway systems around the world specifically, in North America. I would appreciate if you cover the railway system that my country/city has which is Manila. It aint the best nor it stand out as a revolutionary system at that, but the recent developments that occur in our railway system is very interesting to say the least like the NSCR and the subway. Appreciate your vids and will wait for the next one hehe.
Just a reminder that a Nobel Prize winning economist remarked as late as the 2000s that Pudong is just a ghost city, Potemkin in nature
Nice video. Shanghai metro is my favorite in China, you explained it well. I recently made a video about Chinese metro as well mainly focused on its accessibility, I guess that’s why suddenly youtube fed me your video. Interesting to see your take. Have you been to china before to ride em for yourself?
Yes gimme more!
I still think the Maglev should be extended underground to Hongqiao via minimum 1, maximum 4 stops in/around the city center 😔
One fact in Shanghai Metro: all trains will return to the depot before 24:00. If the depot is on the end of the line, so the last train arrives at the terminal station around 23:45. If the journey takes 90 minutes, then the last train will leave the first station around 22:30, making it difficult to travel after 22:30 in the network.
This provides longer period for workers to mantain the train and the tracks, but as an trade-off, passengers may need to use taxis after 22:30.
Have you done the Moscow metro system ?
A lot of issues you mentioned are caused by historical issues and changing of plan. Take the lines terminated near city center for example, the Line 5, 16 and 17 were planed as a part of Line 1, 11 and 2 respectively in the first version of network plan back in the 90s. Line 16 and 17 became independent because of the length, but by the time the decisions were made, the already built buildings and infrastructures made them unable to be extended further. The end of Line 16 is a large apartment community, while the building structure of the Hongqiao station where Line 17 terminates make it couldn't be extended unless it abandon the reserved space and cross-platform transfer. If you choose to extend further, you could cause other issues previously not existed and it will be hard to decide which will be better. So to a large extent the dead end for these two lines aren't be done purposely and force you to change line.
The Line 5 in the other hand is interesting, the reason is what you briefly mentioned that related with local politics. And that did caused serious congestion issue at the Xinzhuang exchange. The congestion was so bad that the station has passenger flow control every weekday morning to avoid safety issues and ensure the train not fully packed at the originate station. The Line 5 did have plan to be extended to Hongqiao station, but it was scrapped because of capacity issue and is now replaced by the Jiamin Line running on a similar route. In addition, the number of 2.6m trains contracted to be produced far exceeded the needs of Line 5, so the design of Line 6 and 8 was changed to use those trains, causing the capacity issue for them. The Pujiang Line meanwhile is simple, it was meant to be the third phase of Line 8 and was changed to APM to reduce the noises and costs, also trial the newly imported technology that was made locally by the JV between CRRC Puzhen and the then Bombardier, to see if it will be a better mid capacity regional rail solution compared with tram. I think its role is similar to those APMs in Singapore.
There are also some other interesting things about Shanghai metro, after the completion of signal system overhaul in 2025, Line 2 will be the first and only metro line in the world having two independent operational signal system, one is CBTC with GoA3, the other is the traditional track circuit based semi moving block system. This is to ensure when one system having issue, the other one can kick in to avoid any disruptions as the sheer patronage of the line will make any disruptions a city wide chaos. The Pudong airport APM, despite not part of metro network, is the only airport people mover that using conventional rail and its operated by a JV between Shanghai Metro and Keolis. It uses 4A trains with provision of 5A, so it makes it more capacity than Line 6 and on par with other 6B Chinese Lines. There are still a lot things about Shanghai Metro and I think it definitely worth new videos, given the plan is still being modified and the new suburban lines will open from next year.
Wow, check Box on my trip to China! Line 10, Maglev from Airport, HSP rail to Beijing back via Hong Kong, (again, and with the second best metro) Pujang Line light brown! Question what's with the abnormal digital readouts that are in Chinese and wonderfully in English, on this great system/network that is hard to better.
great video, thank you, at 11:50 you noted an attendant/driver on the new line 14, why is this so? As the rest of the system is auto.
This is another masterpiece! I find these so relaxing to watch and fascinating
The top three subways in the world are all in China
yet another W for china
Shanghai can save a ton of money and provide a better passenger experience by building lines elevated above their ridiculously wide roads. Perhaps they can spend the extra money on through-running tunnels, so the suburban rail lines head directly to the city center like the Paris RER.
Man I am so happy you covered this. Although as a Canadian Chinese who was born there I haven't lived all my life in Shanghai, the few years I spent there definitely made me appreciate the metro SO MUCH! Yes, transfers are long and annoying, and yes, intercity travel between Pudong and Hongqiao takes longer than a HSR from Hongqiao to Hangzhou, but man is it a great asset to the city. It's so convenient to get around without a car in Shanghai because of the Metro.
I suspect the reason why platform sharing between lines is limited in Shanghai was because of the loop/light rail lines sharing platforms on a majority of track within city centre. Line 3's ridership shot thru the roof after developments in the north of the city and the shared lines majorly affected capacity so I guess planners just avoided the entire thing. This is all my speculation thou.
I really do think NA cities can learn a lot from Chinese metro development since it's so standardized, it's much easier to just copy your homework and tweek it a little instead of making up a complete solution for every case. Saves so much on cost and time, it's a reason why China can build metro in every major city so quickly.
would u like to introduce Hangzhou metro as well!!
The color of line 15 is wrong, which should be a dark goldish color.
Does the international airport have a train station
Impressive pronunciation of Chinese!
I've been to Shanghai last week and travelled to different destinations on the metro. It's modern, convenient and fast. It's truly a terrific system, but the train information display of Shanghai Metro's train is unacceptable. Normally, you would expect the LCD displays or LED route maps on top of the door, but not in Shanghai. Instead, they are located awkwardly above the window and behind a horizontal handrail (except for some early Line 10 trains). I don't understand why Shanghai does it when every other Chinese metro system put the displays on top of the doors.
Part of the issues with missing cross platform transfers is that during peak hours there can be queues to outside of the platform. In Beijing, transfers between line 10 and line 4 can fill the entirety of the 200+m of transfer tunnel during peak hours.
looks like they replaced the European trains with the China A and C stock trains
Thanks for finally featuring my Metro & home town. Good work capturing the vibe. Greetings from M7 Changping Road (faster to enter/exit than equidistant Jing'an Temple). Edit: I suggest you cover Chongqing Metro next, if Shanghai is a model for flat river city systems, CQ is the model for mountainous cities including the much criticized (by outsiders) Hitachi monorails that look strange and run a little slow but climb mountains to connect lines that would otherwise require numerous unaffordable tunnels.
Re: Line 6 & 8, "I would not want to take these lines to work everyday"…welp, these are my daily lines. FML super busy all the time
what a incisive advice, but sadly, if u really need standardization in such transpotation in china(no matter the city is), the 8 cars type A or 8cars urban type C(which is the shanghai airport connection line to use) might be the top-ranking construction/ car use vet. if more car application in a metro line consented, local liability and risk will skyrocket. the most difficult thing is to balance them, and thats why china gets more discreet in metro vetting
As where the city I grew up, the Shanghai Metro is definitely one of the best in the country.
However, over the years there has been a great number of wrong decision and pitfalls in design that happened which leads to a lesser satisfactory system as you may seen.
One of which is the mentioned line 6 and line 8 using C cars and led to overcrowding issues.
Line 18 was the first implementation of Japan's dynamic coupling and Express/local train service which the design could not be fully carried out due to bad block section design and limitation of tracks.
Furthermore, Shanghai metro is running as several divisions with groups of lines operating by one sub-company. For example, line 1 and line 9 belongs to Shanghai Metro Division 1, and part of the line 9 fleet was transferred from line 1 with their numbers still in 01xxxx.
Line 6 and line 8 is also one company for type C trains.
Line 3 and line 4 are shared between the fleets (one sub-div). There are trains with 3 and 4 labeled and there are dual color trains which often confuse non-local people as the line number is displayed on the dot board…
You guys should cover Beijing next, given that it's the first Metro system in China, and is also huge like Shanghai.
Can’t wait to visit Shanghai some day! Please make more videos about Chinese transit systems!
Thanks for this video – please continue covering Chinese networks and some of their amazing stations