Brakes put on subway riders

Starting next month, passengers will be slowed from boarding trains along two of the Shanghai's most crowded subway lines during rush hour, to better help control crowds, subway authorities said Thursday.

After the Tomb-sweeping Festival, Dongjing Road station along the Line 6 subway and Yangsi station along the Line 8 subway will implement the move on April 5.

Dongjing Road station will close Exit 1 from 7:15 am to 8:30 am every workday morning. A zigzag path set up inside the station will further slow crowds from reaching the platform all at once.

Similarly, on weekdays at Yangsi station from 7:15 am to 8:45 am, passengers will only be permitted to leave the station via Exit 1 and enter from Exit 2.

"The two station's passenger buildup has gotten to the point where it's just too difficult for people to get on, while the mounds of people have further raised safety concerns," Huang Chengwei, a press officer for the department operating both lines, from operator Shanghai Shentong Metro Group, told the Global Times Thursday.

Essentially, the plan to ease traffic pressures at Dongjing Road and Yangsi stations, which move up to 2,000 passengers in four-carriage trains and 10,000 passengers in six or seven-carriage trains during the morning rush hour, respectively, aims to spread out the movement of passengers.

Success from the practice most recently adopted at the Line 1 subway's Xinzhuang station earlier this week prompted the operator to do the same for Line 6 and Line 8. Extra subway officers will also be assigned to the stations to ensure that the crowds move smoothly, added Huang.

With the Line 8 subway bringing crowds of commuters to downtown People's Square, and the Line 6 subway transporting people to frequented destinations, including Yuanshen Stadium and Century Avenue, the stations are the latest of 30 others in the city attempting to respond to their rapidly multiplying number of passengers.

And as some 6 million daily commuters become more reliant on the city's massive subway network, which boasts a whopping 280 stations over 11 lines, overcrowding is a problem that authorities are all too aware of these days.

Further plans to alleviate pressures are slated for the end of the year, said Huang.

The operator will add five more trains to the Line 6 subway by the year-end to shorten train intervals by nearly a minute to 2.87 minutes during peak times, increasing passenger-capacity by 30 percent.

Line 8, meanwhile, is expected to get nine extra trains to cut waiting times for commuters during rush hour by almost a minute also, to 2.75 minutes - and upping passenger-capacity by 27 percent.