UrbanRail.Net > Asia > China > Chongqing Metro (Subway & Monorail)

Craig Moore reports in Jan 2019:

Chongqing is a large city, dominated by rapid, and chaotic, urban development. The city has a stunning location, engulfed by mountains and valleys, with the city centre full of high-rise buildings, located on a tongue-shaped spit of land at the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers. It is this topography that makes the city, and its Metro, interesting, necessitating different rail modes and bold infrastructure.

System
The 8-line network is operated by Chongqing Rapid Transit (CRT) and offers two Monorail lines (built and operated to Metro standard) and six full Metro lines. It spreads wide across the vast urban area of the city-region with 305.9km of revenue route (181km underground), accommodating 173 stations (99 underground). Whilst station density is high in the congested central area, this diminishes significantly on the outer reaches of some of the lines and overall the CRT system has a relatively high average station gap of 1.8km.

Monorail Lines:
Given the topography of the area, most of the uniqueness and grandeur of the system comes from the two straddle beam monorail lines. Line 2 is the original urban rail line in the city and is 30.3km (2.4km underground), running from the centre at Jiaochangkou to Yudong in the south. Jianchangkou has a long transfer to Line 1 and from here the route travels underground before elevated running begins at Huanghuayuan. This stretch, on the southern bank of the Jialing, offers impressive views to the north and west. Niujiaotuo provides interchange to Line 3 and involves a pleasant walk along an open-sided corridor to the Line 3 platforms above - the views from both stations are spectacular. Further west is Liziba, a station famed for being built into an apartment block. Although the platform and entrance area of this station are not particularly interesting, the notion that you are stood on the 6th floor of a tall apartment block is, and again the views across the river to the north are mightily impressive. The line soon turns south with a short underground section at Daping (connection to Line 6) followed by elevated running above main roads and through dense residential and commercial areas. Some services terminate at Tiantangbao and from here the service becomes less busy as it heads to the terminus of Yudong, a huge two-island station with connection to Line 3.

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