The World Edition - Transporation - Expansion of Shanghai Transit

Expansion of Shanghai Transit

By Alexander H. Johnstone
SEPTEMBER 4, 2007

In an attempt to recover, struggling cities across the world have applied a variety of planning and development tools. A method that has increasingly produced positive results is that of an innovative transportation system. In the past decade, there has been no city on Earth that has done this quite as effectively as Shanghai, China.

In 1990, the city of Shanghai suffered terribly from overcrowding and congestion. At that time, the city invested in an urban rail mass transit system that is currently on its way to becoming the largest in the world.

Subway construction appears on almost every other street corner in Shanghai. The city currently boasts five subway lines with 95 stations. The system serves approximately 2 million people each day, which is impressive in itself. However, the number of lines and stations is likely to double within the next couple of years. Within the near future, its subway system is projected to surpass the world's current largest and busiest systems. It is difficult to imagine that 20 years ago the primary means of transportation within the center city was a bicycle.

Dozens of cities throughout China are currently developing rail-based public transit systems. China's economy is prospering and rural-to-urban migration has reached historic heights. The nation’s crowded cities can no longer support the automobile and local governments have decided that the rail system is most suitable.

There is a total of 80 miles of urban rail line within the city of Shanghai. This number is expected to extend to approximately 125 miles by 2010. At this rate, by 2020, the system is projected to have dozens of lines with hundreds of stations. Shanghai is currently planning for a system with more than 500 miles of track that would ultimately serve more than 12 million people each day.

Shanghai has been able to thrive in countless ways due its innovative and vastly expanding transportation systems. This shows the extent to which the flow of people throughout a city can have an impact on it as a whole. Its transit system will prepare Shanghai and certainly impress the world as it hosts the World Expo in 2010.