With the whole bomb scare in Jiading district recently, you can't blame us for being a little nervous. Luckily, a bomb threat on Line 2 in downtown turned out to be false. Unfortunately, a couple of elderly were knocked down and bruised by the ensuing stampede. Also: "The crowds poured from the train onto the platform, leaving bags, cell phones and other belongings scattered on the carriage floors. One passenger told the Shanghai Daily reporter that he saw someone carrying a bomb-like object sitting in the last carriage and he openly admitted that it was a bomb, which sent others fleeing for safety. That man left the scene after getting off the train. Police are questioning witnesses in order to track down the man." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Called "Meet on the Second Line" (相约2号线), the game is meant to teach people safety tips for riding the subway. To start playing, you choose from five kinds of passengers - white-collar worker, student, teacher, police and... LAOWAI! That's right, they're their own type of subway passenger with supposedly different habits from the rest of the populace. Let me guess... their special skill is that they actually wait for people to get off before getting on the train? more ›

Stop the presses! Someone actually got into some measure of trouble for SMOKING in Shanghai! According to Shanghai Daily, a man was detained for three days after being caught smoking in a Metro station. He's the first person in Shanghai to ever be held for violating the new-ish law. "The man, surnamed Chen, was found smoking near a ventilation shaft along Line 3 on March 23, police said. Metro police said his behavior "put subway safety in jeopardy." Usually individual offenders are fined. A cleaner first detected Chen smoking on Line 3's Hongkou Football Stadium Station, an elevated station, about 2:15pm, police said. Police arrived shortly after and Chen threw the cigarette butt on the ground. Chen, 49, was taken to a police station for questioning. He told police he knew that smoking is banned in Metro stations and on subway trains. Chen climbed a safety barrier and hid near the ventilation shaft and track to avoid being seen." more ›

UPDATE: Okay, apparently it's just 500km in total. Not 500km extra. That's 80km of subway tracks built in the next year. Everyone in the city knew that the Shanghai government wasn't going to stop adding tracks to the subway system now that the Expo is over, but it's kind of awe-inspiring to see what those track plans entail: 500 kilometers by 2012 - more than doubling what they have now (which at 420km of track is already the longest in the world). Awesome! more ›

According to Shanghai Daily, over the last six months, 1.05 billion passengers rode the Shanghai metro system. That means that the daily average passenger volume was 5.78 million. Astonishingly, that's actually only a 17% rise on what it was before Expo started, meaning that even if it goes down to pre-Expo levels, that's still the population of Greater Boston traveling on our subways each day. more ›

Are subways supposed to be the place for enterprising young singles to look for significant others or something? Last year, a young man pitched a tent to get a wife on Line 7. Now, a girl's trying to pitch other guys' tents on Line 9 - all in the name of finding love. more ›

Congratulations Matt! Our good friend at Exploremetro has managed to get a million people to download his iPhone app - and he's decided to celebrate by giving it out for free! Just for the next two days though. In case you own an iPhone and were on the fence about picking this up, now's the time to give it a twirl. You would have to empty your pockets of 99 cents otherwise! more ›

Perhaps influenced by a spate of metro accidents in Shanghai, some guy with a death wish recently uploaded a video of one of the subway trains on Line 3 coming head on. How did he make the video? By jumping onto the tracks as the train was coming and quickly lying down, filming it taking place overhead. WHAT THE HELL. more ›

Noticed how busy the metro seems recently? That's probably because its carrying a record amount of people - almost 7 million a day in fact! On Friday, it hit a peak with 6.72 million passengers, but that's set to rise in the near future. That's right - soon, the Shanghai metro will transport the equivalent to the entire population of Israel. To ease the congestion from all those riders, Shanghai Metro has said it will be adding services to increase capacity. more ›

Now that restrictions during rush hours on Line 2 have worked out swell, Shanghai metro operators will be introducing them at night as well to ease tourist congestion - especially at the Nanjing Dong Lu stop. Apparently, 144 passengers enter that station every minute between 8pm and 9:30pm, more than the evening rush hour. The situation has gotten so bad that some staff are allowing people in without paying first, asking them to deal with it at their destination. Two more ticket booths havev been added and station entrances will now be closed when "crowds are overwhelming." more ›

After the death of one Line 2 passenger a couple weeks ago and a delay caused by a fainting passenger last week, metro officials have decided to limit passenger numbers at four stations on the line during rush hours to try to make them run more smoothly. The four stations are Zhangjiang High-Tech Park, Dongchang Road, Lujiazui Road and Jiangsu Road. Yikes - is it just me, or does this sound like it'll turn into a bottleneck of passengers right outside the station? more ›

Hey hey, metro riders: Metro Line 2 will be extending its service time towards Pudong airport beginning tomorrow! From now on, instead of that rush hour avoiding 9am to 4pm time frame, the daily hours between Guanglan Road Station and Pudong airport will be 6:30am to 9:30pm. Intervals between trains will also be cut to about 8.5 minutes, from the almost 20 minutes it is now. Metro operators say they expect Line 2 to become "the busiest among the city's lines" after the schedule change. more ›

It's one of those things you see cartoons warning you not to do all the time: when the doors to a subway train are closing, don't panic and try to squeeze your body in. A woman tried that at the Zhongshan Park station. And now she's dead. more ›

While the soft opening for Line 10 was in April, this Saturday the line begins to run past its inconvenient 9am to 10pm test period! Called the "golden line," it runs through Nanjing Lu, Huaihai Lu and Yu Gardens as well as connecting to five existing subway lines. Hurrah! more ›

At least if all goes well for Shanghai Shentong Metro Group, who publicly opened bidding on Tuesday for the project to link our on-again off-again finally-confirmed wonder park to the Line 11 subway. The new subway track is planned to cover over 9km and will be likely roughly three stations away from the current Line 11 Luoshan Lu station. It's expected to be completed by 2012, a good two years before the park itself plans to open. more ›

Not that we spent a lot of time on it anyway, but it looks like Shanghaiist would definitely not be welcome on the Metrofans BBS forum. Apparently our posts questioning the effectiveness of the subway baggage inspections are absolutely not welcome. Micah Sittig translates a "Management plan" stickied to the top of each forum that was posted just before the dry runs of the World Expo began. more ›

Did you know Metro Line 10 is also called the "golden line"? Apparently, it earns its nickname by running through several of the city's main business hubs (Nanjing Lu, Huaihai Lu, Yuyuan etc) and connecting to five existing subways... and it opens tomorrow! Like all openings in recent history, it'll be running on a 9am to 4pm schedule at first, and only begin taking rush hour traffic when the World Expo starts. In case you want a sneak peek at what Line 10 will look like, check out this gallery and video on Xinmin.cn. more ›

Recently, an alleged metro bag screener went on Tianya to vent his frustration - and since we usually only hear the passenger side of this major inconvenience, I figured it'd be interesting to see what he had to say. Apparently, the poor kid gets verbally abused a lot by irate travelers and, though for the most part he takes it in stride, there's a few choice words of advice he'd like to have with you. more ›

Rather than bother with the headache of adding a few more subway carriages, Shanghai Metro has decided to hire people to personally shove you inside one. Because when you live in the most populous country on earth, sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands: literally. more ›

What is it with people acting strangely on the subway these days? Yesterday, a woman caused a delay on the Line 9 after brandishing a fruit knife at other passengers. Also, a man has apparently been dressing up as his favorite Korean Idol and doing strange dances all over our metro - to the delight of netizens, who've named him "Leopard Print Man" and uploaded videos and posted his pictures on various internet forums. more ›

• Ex-Shanghaiist contributor Abe Deyo is quoted to prove why Shanghai bands were silly to wig out over Pepsi's Battle of the Bands contest. [Voxrock]
• Jake Newby then calls the Pepsi English blog out, noting that it was surprising that something all about the Battle of the Bands contest didn't bother reporting on the massive Guangdong stage accident. [Kungfuology]
• Local maritime authorities are restricting the transport of dangerous freight on the Huangpu River to prevent accidents during the Shanghai World Expo. [Xinhua]
• According to this New York Times entry, you can get a first-class ticket between Los Angeles and Shanghai for less than $3,500 USD. WHAT! [NY Times]

We're not sure what's going on here, but according to a tipster and these (very NSFW) photos, a woman stripped down to the nude on a Line 1 subway train last night after getting into a heated argument with a man. She then grabbed onto his leg and was dragged a couple of steps before the man escaped her grip and ran off. Afterwards, she walked around the subway car naked until a middle-aged lady gave her a coat. Police came at the next stop and took her away. The police said they had seen her do this before, the blog post alleged. So... Porn-y bad-taste promotional stunt or the unfortunate capturing of someone who's seriously disturbed? Update: Were the images taken down? more ›