With the aroma of a shoe shop, Nanjing Metro Line 4 opened on schedule at 6am this morning, 18th January, 2017, bringing a life of greater convenience to those living or working across a large swathe of Nanjing.
Operating in an east-west direction and for much of its length parallel to line 2, line 4 trains run from Longjiang station in the west and terminate alternately at Dongliu or Xianlin Hu stations in the east. With a frequency of approximately 6 minutes at present, this means travellers to the three stations east of Dongliu could face up to a 12 minute wait for the next service. Authorities have already said that they will monitor passenger flow and demand, bringing about changes as necessary to provide more convenient services.
While the line is long at just shy of 34 km, in the greater shame of things, it is ultimately planned to extend the western end all the way to Pukou and a station at Zhenzhu Quan, also known as the Pearl Spring area, in much the same way as Line 1 was renamed Line 10 with its extension from Olympic Stadium to Pukou, at Yushan Lu.
Intersecting with lines 1, 2 and 3, at Gulou, Jinma Lu and Jiming Si respectively, line 4 trains’ on board signage also shows stickers covering future intersections such as that with line 5, which is expected to open sometime after line S3’s debut slated for later this year.
Line 4 also introduces new voices to the various announcements in the stations and on the trains themselves. Taking care of the English duties are Maria Elizabeth Julian, who, when not talking on the Metro, is in charge of planning and coordinating events for Nanking Nation (NKN), among other activities, and Nanjing Expat’s very own Frank Hossack, who brings over 30 years of experience in voice work to the role. He commented, “It’s been great working with the Nanjing Metro. In addition to being a lot of fun, everyone has been very professional under quite demanding conditions with exacting requirements and great attention to detail. For me, the hardest part was getting the Chinese tones right for the names of the stations!”
For her part, Maria said, “The boss said he could tell how happy or sad I was, by listening deep into my voice. Instead of learning how to mask this, I learned how to make myself feel happy before each recording!”
Trains for line 4 have been built by CSR Nanjing Puzhen, a leader in the industry that has also produced rolling stock for the metro networks of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Shenzhen and even Mumbai in India. With line 4 bringing the network track length to 258 km, the Nanjing Metro network remains the fifth biggest in China, after Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
