Many of Nanjing’s commuters who make their daily journeys to and from the office by way of the Metro have been given a boost in the form of additional services that potentially shave quite a chunk of time in their Monday-Friday grind.
Anyone who’s taken a ride on Nanjing Metro Line 3 under the Yangtze River will tell you it’s a shoulder to shoulder experience. The reason is simple; a lack of other options.
Line 3 is the third longest on the Nanjing network, at 44.9 kilometres. Lines S8 and S9 are longer but Line takes the title for having the most stations; 29 in total.
With passenger numbers simply growing continually, Nanjing Metro recently decided to purchase additional train sets to alleviate the congestion.
Of the 12 train sets purchased, eight are presently entering service.
The result is relief, especially for passengers looking to get on a Line 3 train at the stations of Shangyuan Men and Liuzhou Dong Lu that are the first on either side of the river.
For them, it means the next train is coming along much sooner than before. In fact, fully 20 seconds has been cut off the interval time between trains.
Now trains on Line 3 train travel on average only 2 minutes apart. According to Nanjing Metro, that’s the shortest interval on the network.
Like Line 1, Nanjing Metro is largely a north-south affair, albeit running quite some way to the former’s east. The two also have in common stations at both Nanjing Railway Station and Nanjing South Railway Station. The additional services on Line 3 at these key railway hubs also comes as welcome news to those coming in or out of Nanjing, especially during rush hours.
Before the new train sets arrived, Line 3 was operating a total of 46 six-car sets, built right here in Nanjing. The addition of a further 12 therefore represents a considerable investment on the part of Nanjing Metro in convenience for the many, many thousands of passengers who travel on Line 3 each day.
