By now you have probably heard about that huge metro accident in Shanghai, China. Over two hundred people were injured yesterday when one subway train slammed into the rear of another metro car.
The map comes via @georgedarroch who notes that only three of these lines existed in 2005. Indeed, this is from a Bloomberg story about the accident.
The accident, two months after a fatal high-speed train crash, has stoked concerns that China’s rapid construction of new transport links comes at the cost of safety. Shanghai’s subway and maglev-train network expanded more than sevenfold in eight years to 453 kilometers because of a growing population and demand during last year’s World Expo.
“This is an alarm bell for the subway system after years of rapid growth,” said Jack Xu, an analyst at Sinopac Securities Asia Ltd. in Shanghai. “Investment in the sector may slow in the near term.”
That’s just incredible. Here in D.C. the metro opened in 1976. Recently, we have been trying to build one simple train line from the city to the main international airport — a feat that seems to be taking like forever.
The accident occurred on Line 10, which is the darkish red colored line in the upper left hand corner of the map.