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Global Times | 2012-7-2 23:30:06 | By Miranda Shek

An estimated 120,000 subway commuters were thrown into confusion during rush hour Monday morning after a series of glitches delayed
trains for more than an hour on lines 1 and 2.

The subway authority implemented emergency crowd control procedures to cope with the backup of passengers at 17 stations along both
lines.

The two lines, which are Shanghai's busiest, carry about 1.62 million passengers every weekday, accounting for 40 percent of the total
passenger volume on Shanghai's 14 lines, according to the subway operator.

The operator did not elaborate on the cause of the two glitches, but it stressed that the two incidents were not related.

Glitches on the subway system are not uncommon. The city's subway lines have been pushed to the limit due to overcrowding, said Ye
Xiafei, director of the Urban Rail Transit and Railway Engineering Department at Tongji University.



The first glitch occurred at 8:15 am, when a westbound train broke down on line 2 at Century Avenue Station in Pudong New Area, where the
line interchanges with lines 4, 6 and 8, trapping more than 500 passengers, Shanghai Shentong Metro Group said in a statement.

It took engineers more than 30 minutes to tow the train off the track.

At one point, westbound trains traveling between Longyang Road and Zhongshan Park stations were only arriving every 10 minutes, as
opposed to the usual rush hour interval of two minutes.

Another glitch on Line 1 followed the initial problem on Line 2. The second glitch occurred at 8:40 am, slowing northbound trains traveling
between Xinzhuang and the Shanghai South Railway Station.

Dispatchers switched to manual operation for more than an hour along the five affected stations on line 1, the subway operator said. "As a result,
trains along the affected section of Line 1 had to slow down to avoid accidents," Lan told the Global Times. "We put our passengers' safety first
despite crowds lining up at the stations."

The subway operator apologized to passengers and vowed to check frequently for faults with the trains and the signal system to cope with high
temperatures and floods during the summer.