Seven passengers were injured when they stumbled over a 10-centimeter vertical gap between the platforms and the thresholds of carriages in the first four days of trial operations on Metro Lines 6 and 8.

The gap was said to be more than 15 centimeters at some platforms, the Shanghai Morning Post reported today.

However, the report quoted unnamed experts as saying the gap is in line with Metro design regulations which allow platforms to be about five to 10 centimeters lower than metro carriages.

Metro operators said they are working on the problem and will try to reduce the gap to within five centimeters, the report said.

Meanwhile, operators of Metro Line 6, the only line that wholly runs in Pudong New Area, planned to send extra trains to ease overcrowding on the busiest part of the line, the report said.

Timetables for these extra trains are still under study, the report said. Another six trains may be added to the busiest section within the year.

The extra trains are expected to reduce waiting intervals to six minutes, less than half the current 13 minutes, on 13 stations from Jufeng Road Station to Shanghai Children's Medical Center Station, the most crowded part on the line, the report said.

Line 6, which started trial operations with Lines 8 and 9 last Saturday, is the first Metro service catering for passengers traveling between the north and south areas of Pudong.

The 27-station line should have been a blessing for commuters but instead was the focus of complaints from Wednesday, the first day back to work after New Year Day's holiday since the line opened.

The Metro operators revealed that Line 6, which operates from 6:30 am to 10:06 pm and can carry 4,000 people an hour, transported about 84,000 commuters on Wednesday, 22,000 more than they planned for.

Many stations on Line 6 were overcrowded and it was almost impossible for the doors to close without station workers pushing passengers into the carriages during the morning rush.

Operators said two standing-only trains will soon be added to Line 6 on the section from Jufeng Road to the medical center to see whether passenger flow can be improved, the report said.

Besides, bus companies said they would add more buses along the route of Metro Line 6 after many passengers complained they had lost the option of taking the bus to work because the bus lines had been adjusted after Line 6 opened.

Many bus lines that run parallel to Line 6, such as the 773, 936 and 968, had been canceled, combined with other routes or rerouted.

Officials with the Pudong transport authority said the bus route adjustments were temporary and would last about three months to see if they were reasonable.

More changes to the bus routes are expected after June as they gather more feedback from the bus fleet.

Long intervals and small trains were the major causes of the crowding on Line 6. While the city's other lines mostly use six to eight-carriage trains with a single carriage carrying 400 people, a train on Line 6, with four smaller carriages, can carry only 800 people.

(Shanghai Daily January 4, 2008)