Shanghai’s Subway Looks to New York, but Not for Everything<br />Only two lines — the Lexington Avenue subway and the Queens Boulevard line — are<br />able to offer trains every two minutes, and other lines can be much slower.<br />Shanghai’s subway system, like most such networks around the world, does not have separate local<br />and express tunnels, so the entire system has to stop every night for maintenance.<br />As a result, most transfer stations involve just two lines, a few have three lines and only one station in the entire network has four.<br />While the New York system is aging, it still shows the soaring ambition of its original creators<br />in its bold design — express tunnels and stations bring together up to a dozen lines.<br />Shanghai, on the other hand, has a subway map that looks more like a rectangular<br />grid — lines run north to south, and east to west, with few exceptions.<br />But faced with a city with three times the population of New York,<br />and fearful of overcrowding, Shanghai subway officials say that they prefer the simplicity.
