The World’s LARGEST Metro System! | Shanghai Metro Explained

Thanks for all the kind comments everyone! Shanghai has a very impressive system!

What Chinese city do you think I should cover next?

Hi Reece, I think many people would appreciate more videos about Chinese/Asian metro systems and bring their good operation to other parts of the world.

I used to be subscribed to your chanel but unsubscribed some time ago, this video reminded me of one of the reasons I did unsubscribe, and that is that you speak way to quickly, it's more like stream of consciousness rather than narration and information transfer, by the way the other reason was your incessant mentions of the Sky Rail.

Just to say somthing for my fav(and most used) line of all, Line 3. The reason why it was entirely built above ground is because before the construction it was classified as a 'Light Rail' to sort of circumvent the restrictions on constructing new metro lines due to economic and debt reasons back then. Also some part of it was built directly on(or I should say above) the old Songhu Railway, built in 1876 by the British.

Great video, as usual. Any plan to make videos on Shenzhen and Guangzhou metros?

Nice video. Have you ever done a video on the Tashkent Metro? Supposedly it has interesting stations.

So envious! Although it may be worth looking at what sacrifices were made to build a network so rapidly. Not that that would be an easy or even possible task.

One note: it doesn’t look like Shanghai is growing rapidly anymore in terms of population. Economically (and perhaps in terms of per capita I’m traveled) it’s a different story.

Thank you for the efforts! You are definitely Pro at explaining the subway system in China. Hope you can do more cities!🎉

👍👍👍

Thanks for covering my hometown. Have been waiting for this for years. Speaking of the last points you covered, there are plans for building express lines accross the city center proposed by the metro operator Shentong, but has not heen approved yet.

When did Line 2 get a dark mode livery? That looks so sick

Overcrowding and the lack of regional transit options is definitely a major issue in Shanghai and other major Chinese cities, as mentioned in the video. I'd say the best way to address this would be to implement some a comprehensive regional rail system like the Paris RER system, which would allow for faster trips on larger trains and take pressure off equivalent metro lines. Unfortunately, China's expertise is (again, as mentioned in the video) mostly with metro and intercity rail lines, and space underground is seriously limited in the city centre area, so something like this won't be happening any time soon.

Love the channel. Im a long time subscriber and also a long term resident of Suzhou. If you want some footage of the metro and tram lines let me know.

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

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 😅

I'm going to be using tjis metro extensively in the next few months…

There's no skyscrapers on the Bund.

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

If you add suburban railway and satellite city metros, then it would probably be more than 5000 kilometers