Shanghai Metro's Driverless GoA4 Lines
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below 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.
10 sourced claims on this page, none individually verified yet — turn on “Sources in the text” to see each one.
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Line 10 opened in 2010 with automatic-operation capability and then carried drivers for a decade. When that signalling failed in 2011 and the line went over to manual working, one train ran into another: 271 injured.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 11 more in Shanghai · 🚌 Public transport guide · 🚲 Mobility projects
Five Shanghai Metro lines run without a driver or attendant on board at GoA4, the highest grade of automation: Line 10, the Pujiang line, and lines 18, 15 and 14, the last of which opened at the end of December 2021. Line 10 opened in 2010 as one of the first lines in China capable of automatic train operation and carried drivers on board anyway; the switch to unattended running began in 2020, with the driver cabs taken out of the fleet. The signalling comes from Chinese joint ventures of European suppliers — Casco, an Alstom and CRSC venture, on Line 10, and Thales SEC Transport, a Thales and Shanghai Electric venture, on Line 14. A 2011 collision on Line 10 injured 271 people after a signalling failure had forced a switch to manual operation.
📊 Impact
Shanghai Metro reported 167 km of driverless GoA4 route across five lines when Line 14 opened at the end of December 2021, and said that made Shanghai first in the world for driverless metro scale. The length is independently confirmed: trade press covering the same opening puts the five fully automated lines at a combined 167 km, inside a network that had just reached 831 route-km with 20 lines and 508 stations. The ranking is not confirmed — it rests on the operator's own statement. Line 14 itself ran late: the signalling contractor announced in January 2018 that it was scheduled to enter service at the end of 2020.
🎓 Lesson
The equipment and the crew are two separate decisions here too, and Line 10 shows the gap at its widest. It opened in April 2010 as one of the first lines in China capable of automatic train operation and ran with drivers for a decade; the cabs came out from 2020. In between, on 27 September 2011, a signalling failure put the line onto manual working and one train ran into another that had stopped between Yuyuan Garden and Laoximen: 271 people treated in hospital, twenty of them seriously hurt, nobody killed. The line built to run itself injured people on a day it was being run by hand. No source here connects that to the ten-year wait for unattended operation, and it would be easy to assume one — but the sequence is worth holding onto, because the only figure the operator offers for the interval is a kilometre count.
Sources
Show 1 more sourcesShow fewer
📅 How old is the evidence?
Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2010. 4 of 6 sources carry a publication date, from 28 September 2011 to 5 January 2022.
When the sources were published
- China Daily · pressChina Daily: 271 injured in Shanghai's subway crash
- RailwayPro · pressRailwayPro: Shanghai Metro Line 14 will be fully automated and driverless
- Global Times · pressGlobal Times: Shanghai's driverless metro reaches 167 km (Dec 2021)
- Railway Gazette International · pressRailway Gazette: Shanghai metro passes 800 km as another driverless line opens
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 10 claims with their sources · the forensic record
Evidence Passport · public beta 10 addressable claims, 6 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.
Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 10
The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
clm-ac1e56c416e0807b
quantitative
Five Shanghai Metro lines run without a driver or attendant on board at GoA4, the highest grade of automation: Line 10, the Pujiang line, and lines 18, 15 and 14, the last of which opened at the end of December 2021
Sources carrying this claim
clm-a110005705385d8e
quantitative
Line 10 opened in 2010 as one of the first lines in China capable of automatic train operation and carried drivers on board anyway; the switch to unattended running began in 2020, with the driver cabs taken out of the fleet
Sources carrying this claim
clm-de1da376b7ab0719
quantitative
The signalling comes from Chinese joint ventures of European suppliers — Casco, an Alstom and CRSC venture, on Line 10, and Thales SEC Transport, a Thales and Shanghai Electric venture, on Line 14
Sources carrying this claim
clm-1ea361260f77fbf2
quantitative
A 2011 collision on Line 10 injured 271 people after a signalling failure had forced a switch to manual operation
Sources carrying this claim
clm-fc9e8fcefb22160b
quantitative
Shanghai Metro reported 167 km of driverless GoA4 route across five lines when Line 14 opened at the end of December 2021, and said that made Shanghai first in the world for driverless metro scale
Sources carrying this claim
clm-1826fa587c348262
quantitative
trade press covering the same opening puts the five fully automated lines at a combined 167 km, inside a network that had just reached 831 route-km with 20 lines and 508 stations
Sources carrying this claim
clm-6d842d2a7568c23c
quantitative
Line 14 itself ran late: the signalling contractor announced in January 2018 that it was scheduled to enter service at the end of 2020
Sources carrying this claim
clm-5bae2b72e4d37d14
quantitative
It opened in April 2010 as one of the first lines in China capable of automatic train operation and ran with drivers for a decade; the cabs came out from 2020
Sources carrying this claim
clm-59e9a2e1dba28624
quantitative
on 27 September 2011, a signalling failure put the line onto manual working and one train ran into another that had stopped between Yuyuan Garden and Laoximen: 271 people treated in hospital, twenty of them seriously hurt, nobody killed
Sources carrying this claim
clm-84779d810fc86212
descriptive
No source here connects that to the ten-year wait for unattended operation, and it would be easy to assume one — but the sequence is worth holding onto, because the only figure the operator offers for the interval is a kilometre count
Sources carrying this claim
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
Erratum on this revision's envelope. The snapshot, its hash and its permanent link are untouched.
- createdAt previously read 2026-08-28T07:00:00Z. The batching script that produced this revision advanced createdAt into the future to satisfy the strictly-increasing order the validator requires per entity. The value never recorded a real event; the corrected value is the moment the revision provably existed in the repository. Corrected to 2026-08-27T01:08:46Z on 2026-08-27; evidence: first appears in commit de57bebcd4, committed 2026-08-27T01:08:46Z.
sha256:f559b7957e315a2ba6119a94ddd0959df503e0853623881de105b5cf4e684974
- 10
- of 10 claims mapped
- 6
- source dossiers
- 4
- publication dates recorded
- 0
- archives linked
- 0
- exact locators
- 0
- content captures hashed
Governance facts carried by the record
- Operator
- Shanghai Shentong Metro Group
- Actor types
- utility
- Funding model
- public
- Funding description
- Not recorded
- Cost
- Not recorded
- Ownership
- Not recorded
- Decision rights
- Not recorded
- Exit conditions
- Not recorded
6 source dossiers
Global Times: Shanghai's driverless metro reaches 167 km (Dec 2021)
- Stable source ID
src-26e40a1c9b225fde- Publisher
- Name not classified · globaltimes.cn
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2021-12-28
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-26
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-28
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Chinese state media relaying Shanghai Metro's own figures: five automated lines, 167 km, and the operator's claim of ranking first worldwide for driverless scale. Source of the impact figure; operator-attributed, not independently audited.
Railway Gazette: Shanghai metro passes 800 km as another driverless line opens
- Stable source ID
src-de415bc332243f17- Publisher
- Name not classified · railwaygazette.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2022-01-05
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-26
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-28
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Established trade press, January 2022. Independent confirmation of the five fully automated lines and their combined length.
RailwayPro: Shanghai Metro Line 14 will be fully automated and driverless
- Stable source ID
src-12a68b5184310dfd- Publisher
- Name not classified · railwaypro.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2018-01-29
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-26
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-28
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Trade press. Line 14 length (38.5 km, 31 underground stations), Fully Automated Operation, and the Thales SEC Transport (Thales / Shanghai Electric JV) signalling contract.
- Claims linked
Wikipedia: Line 10 (Shanghai Metro)
- Stable source ID
src-df74c81b01a46b14- Publisher
- Name not classified · en.wikipedia.org
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-26
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-28
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Supporting reference: Line 10's first phase opened on 10 April 2010; it is one of the first lines in China capable of automatic train operation but was operated with drivers on board on opening; from 2020 it began transitioning to GoA4 unattended operation with driver cabs gradually removed from the whole fleet; and the 27 September 2011 collision at 14:37 between Yuyuan Garden and Laoximen injured 271, twenty seriously. A living article with no publication date.
Wikipedia: Shanghai Metro
- Stable source ID
src-5f92e091de53bf01- Publisher
- Name not classified · en.wikipedia.org
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-26
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-28
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Supporting reference listing lines 10, 14, 15, 18 and Pujiang as unattended train operation, with their opening dates. A living article with no publication date.
- Claims linked
China Daily: 271 injured in Shanghai's subway crash
- Stable source ID
src-41178c5bafac7d09- Publisher
- Name not classified · chinadaily.com.cn
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2011-09-28
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-07-26
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-28
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Contemporary report on the 27 September 2011 Line 10 collision: 271 treated in hospital, no deaths, signalling failure had forced a switch to manual operation.
Known limits of this passport
- Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
- Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
- A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
- The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Shanghai Metro's Driverless GoA4 Lines” — Shanghai, China. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/shanghai-metro-driverless-lines/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.