Nanjing is about to join the club of cities with a metro line on which trains run completely autonomously. Yes, that means no drivers in control of our city’s Metro Line 7 trains which have now commenced their test runs.
Nanjing Metro made the announcement that trial operations had begun last Friday, 12 August, saying that Line 7 had passed the acceptance of project works on 9 August, clearing the way for the running tests.
The northern section of Line 7 has its eastern terminus at Mufu Xi Lu near the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge on its southern side. It then proceeds in a largely northeasterly direction into Qixia District where it terminates at its intersection with what will be Line 8 at Xianxin Lu.
The new line shall bring this hitherto unserved part of our city into the rest of the Nanjing Metro network via intersections with Line 1 and 3, at Xiao Zhuang and Wutang Guang Chang, respectively.
In the case of the former, Xiao Zhuang is in fact the first station north of Maigaoqiao on the northern extension to Line 1, which is also yet to be completed.
There shall also be an additional intersection at Wanshou on Line 7, with the future Line 6, presently under construction.
All in, there are ten stations along Line 7, with the remainder being, from east to west, Mufu Shan, Dingjiazhuang, Dingjiazhuang South, Yaohua Xin Cun and Yaohua Men.
Back to that automation, which for Line 7 is defined as being of “GoA4” level, the highest degree of autonomy for a train that exists. Thereby, trains are distinct by being capable of operating automatically at all times, while also being able to open and close doors, detect obstacles and react to emergencies.
Automated trains also offer numerous advantages over their human-controlled counterparts, notably increased passenger capacity, less power consumption and more frequent service intervals.
Trial operations of a new line on the Nanjing Metro network typically take around 3 months, before fare-paying passengers may start their commute.
But this is the first time our city has trialed a fully-automated line. So expect a delay. But all being well, and with a dose of good luck, we may be riding the driverless Nanjing Metro Line 7 sometime soon after new year.
