Upgrade to Subway

A subway is either an underground or elevated railway system, usually electric powered, designed to transport passengers from point to point within a city. Like other large cities in China, Wuhan is experiencing growing traffic congestion problems. These old cities were designed and built before the automobile arrived and as a result there is no space available to enlarge streets to accommodate the growth in numbers of vehicles trying to use them. One partial solution is to use the space under or over current streets. A large cylinder could be drilled under the street and fitted with a subway. The space above the street could be used to support an elevated road or rail system.

Wuhan is in the process of building both an underground and elevated subway system. In the Hankou part of Wuhan, the subway is above ground. Here where I live in the Wuchang part, it is underground. In the Hanyang part I am not sure if it is all above ground or both. The picture below shows the above ground system in Hankou.

There are eight lanes below with the columns supporting the overhead subway running down the center of the street. Talk about a traffic mess when that was being built. Building under the street helps greatly until you come to a substation. You have to open the street to build it and that nearly closes the street above causing a traffic nightmare.

The subway has an operator car at both ends with an operator in the car going forward. When the end of the line is reached, the train switches to the other side and goes in the other direction. The operator walks the length of the train and gets in the first car going forward. The previous last car in now the new first car.

When I got on the cars were not very crowed. The number of cars is the same for all trains, with each train being the length of the substation platforms.

There are clear markings on the floor of the platform where every door will be when the train stops. It was kind of fun learning about the system as I rode it. I chose an afternoon and rode the bus to a subway station and paid about 30 cents for a token to get me past the gate to get on. If I was doing anything wrong it wasn’t intentional, but I rode to the end of the line, got off and went down to the middle level and found I could cross over to the other side, go back up and get on the train going back, so I did. I got on the next one and rode all the way to the other end. I got off, crossed over and got back on and rode back to where I started. When I turned in my token to get through the gate to the street, it indicated that I didn’t ride the subway, but I know I did and I enjoyed it. That was one long, fun ride for about 30 cents. Someday it will be much longer. My goal is to keep coming to China for two more years so I can ride it when it is finished, but then there will be something the next year to come back for.

At the original station where I got on, there is a new building being built, which caught my eye. The picture shows the basement, which is several stories deep. What caught my eye was the special design of the braces used to hold back the basement walls. I think that is one cool picture.