Nanjing Metro

The Railway Technology site has some information about the Nanjing Metro. Though, I'm not sure how much of it you can trust. They obviously didn't fact check the Nanjing city information. (Second largest city in China? Hmmm, does that mean that only one of Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong is bigger than it? I don't think so. And it also says that it is 1 kilometre away from Beijing... Hmmm. Maybe a kilo-kilometre. But this is major digression.)

Yesterday, on going up towards the Yangtze River, we saw plenty of construction on this new 3rd line. It goes through an area that is fairly run down. We saw some places where walls had been knocked down, and nothing put up. However, there are some new construction towers replacing some single-story dwellings, so things may be prepping for the new line. (Nearby, there is also one neighborhood that looks like a "Chinatown". Imagine that, a chinatown in China.

The existing metro line is pretty well done. They have a lot of the "little" features that make subways nice. The stations has displays of the next few oncoming trains. The inside of the train has little signs showing the current stop and the next one. The stations also have maps of the local area with all the exists shown. I find the numbering of the exists especially useful. At some stations, the numbering goes past 20. It is nice to be able to say. "Go to stop X, exit Y" and be able to find the exact location you want. The platforms have floor-to-ceiling "gates", making it impossible to end up on the platform if there is no train there. The escalators slow down to a crawl if nobody is there, but then speed up when you step on. (this saves energy, but still lets you know what direction it is going.) All in all, it is a well designed subway. It will be nice to see if they complete the entire metro blueprint.