Metro breakdown strands thousands

Shanghai’s Metro Line 1 was paralyzed by an equipment malfunction on Wednesday morning, leaving thousands of passengers stranded.

An initial investigation by Shanghai Metro suggested that the breakdown was caused by a problem with track-switching on Line 1 near People’s Square Station. Investigations are continuing.

At 6:55am, Shanghai Metro said on its official Weibo account that there was an equipment breakdown on the line that forced trains to run at limited speed between Shanghai Railway Station and Xujiahui Station, causing delays of more than an hour.

The Metro operator put on 40 shuttle buses stopping at each Metro station in the affected section to keep passengers moving.

At 7:25am, transfers to Line 1 at the Changshu Road, South Shaanxi Road, Hanzhong Road and People’s Square interchange stations were suspended.

The Metro operator said at 8:10am the problem was fixed. But since a large number of passengers were still packed into stations waiting, the backlog would take some time to clear.

Qu Zheng entered Gongkang Road Station in Baoshan District about 7:45am as usual. She found the station hall crowded with people and the turnstiles were closed. The queue of passengers extended out of the station.

“I waited for about 15 minutes until they allowed me to get through the turnstiles,” said Qu. “When I got down to the platform, it was packed with people as well.”

She told Shanghai Daily that she waited for another six trains to pass because they were so packed that no one was able to squeeze in.

“Altogether, I waited more than 30 minutes until I was squashed into a train,” Qu said.

Shirly Mao came to the Hanzhong Road Station around 7am, only to find the Metro not functioning.

“A staffer at the station told me they started repairing at 5am,” Mao said.

She was stranded at the station for an hour, with no shuttle bus.

“When the bus finally came at 8:12am, the broadcast in the station said the problem was fixed,” said Mao. She eventually took a train, by which stage she had been waiting in the station for almost 80 minutes.

By 9am, Shanghai Metro said the passenger backlog was leveling off.