🚲 Mobility

Zhujiang New Town Automated People Mover (APM)

Guangzhou Metro's APM line, opened 8 November 2010 just before the Asian Games, is a 3.94km, nine-station driverless people mover running underground through the Zhujiang New Town CBD on Bombardier rolling stock under the CityFlo 650 signalling system, at the highest automation grade (GoA4/unattended) — no driver and no on-board attendant. It was among the first fully unattended rail lines in China and remains in service today, run by Guangzhou Metro Corporation, but ridership has stayed modest relative to its capacity: about 39,700 average daily riders in the first half of 2023.

Live 📅 since 2010

🤖 AI-generated summary of the sources below — how this works · 🔎 Last verified 2026-08-02

🚲 Mobility Autonomous vehicles Public transport

📊 Impact

≈ 39,700 average daily riders in H1 2023, on a 3.94km/9-station line (Guangzhou Metro figures via Wikipedia).

Evidence🏛️ Official

Scale🏘️ District

📖 Terms in this entry: CBTC (communications-based train control) · Grades of Automation (GoA) · Personal rapid transit (PRT)

Sources

↗ Wikipedia (background)Launch date (8 Nov 2010), operator, line length/stations, H1 2023 ridership (39,700/day), flat fare.

↗ Peer-reviewed (ResearchGate/Springer)Academic paper on urban-rail full-automation (FAO) systems confirming the Zhujiang New Town APM adopted Bombardier's Cityflo 650 CBTC at GoA4 in November 2010.

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed above and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

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Compare this project

🇺🇸 Metromover: fare-free driverless people mover in downtown Miami · Miami Same genre: a fare-free/low-driver GoA4 people mover built for a CBD, with ridership well under its designed capacity. 🇨🇳 Shenzhen Metro's GoA4 Driverless Lines (20 & 14) · Shenzhen Domestic peer a decade later: Shenzhen's GoA4 lines run full-scale metro service, not a short CBD people mover. 🇰🇿 Astana LRT (Tarlan Astana) driverless light metro · Astana Contrast: Astana's driverless light metro opened over a decade after Guangzhou's APM, same modest-ridership pattern. 🇨🇳 Line 8 Driverless Metro (GoA4) · Tianjin Domestic peers a decade apart: Guangzhou's 2010 APM was an early GoA4 test bed for the full metro line Tianjin built.

Explore the wider context

🔑 Your Smart City Is Owned by Someone Else 🚗 Autonomous vehicles guide 🏙️ Guangzhou city profile 🚲 Mobility projects

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Zhujiang New Town Automated People Mover (APM)” — Guangzhou, China. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/guangzhou-zhujiang-apm/ (last verified 2026-08-02). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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