Welcome to the World’s Most Extreme Commute
Picture this: your morning commute involves soaring over rivers on suspension bridges, threading through residential apartment buildings, and descending so deep underground that your ears pop from the pressure change. Sound like science fiction? It’s actually the daily reality for millions of people in Chongqing, China—home to the most extreme metro system ever built.
This isn’t your typical subway. The Chongqing metro holds multiple world records, defies conventional engineering wisdom, and operates in a city that seems to break every rule about where cities should exist. So how did China pull off this engineering marvel? Let’s dive into the fascinating story behind this record-breaking transit system.
The Impossible City: Why Chongqing Shouldn’t Exist
Most cities are built on flat terrain for good reason—it’s simply easier. At worst, urban planners might contend with a few gentle hills. Chongqing throws this logic completely out the window.
This Chinese megacity sprawls across a dramatic landscape of mountains that slice through the urban fabric in long, straight lines like fingers on a hand. The elevation difference across the city is staggering: the highest points reach about 400 meters above sea level, while the lowest dip to around 150 meters. That’s a 250-meter difference—imagine a skyscraper in the low-lying areas that still wouldn’t reach the elevated neighborhoods.
The result? A disorienting urban experience that journalists have described as “a cross between the movie Inception and a game of snakes and ladders.” Locals call it the “8D city”—a place where ground level is a relative concept and multi-story plazas connect buildings at different elevations.
And 32 million people call this vertical maze home. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly four times the population of New York City, all navigating extreme verticality every single day.
The Transportation Crisis That Demanded a Solution
A few decades ago, Chongqing’s transportation situation was dire. Without rail transit, residents relied on:
- Overcrowded buses struggling up steep inclines
- Gridlocked roads carrying tens of thousands of commuters during rush hour
- Cable cars that offered limited coverage
- Exhausting walks up and down countless stairs
One transportation expert ranked Chongqing’s system as the second worst in all of China. The city desperately needed a metro to relieve the choking congestion. But building one seemed almost absurd given the extreme topography.
Five World Records (And Counting)
When Chongqing Metro finally opened in 2005, it didn’t just solve a transportation problem—it shattered expectations and set multiple world records in the process. Today, the system spans 560 kilometers, making it the sixth longest metro network globally, surpassing both the New York subway and London Underground.
But length is just the beginning. Here’s what makes this metro truly extraordinary:
Record #1: The Highest Metro Station
Hualongqiao station sits almost 50 meters above ground level, offering passengers dramatic views as trains glide along elevated tracks that seem to float above the city.
Record #2: The Deepest Metro Station
Hongyancun station plunges more than 100 meters below the surface. Commuters spend eight full minutes riding escalators just to reach the platform, and many report their ears popping from the pressure change during descent. Incredibly, this station and the highest station exist on the same line, just a few stops apart.
Record #3: The Longest Metro-Only Suspension Bridge
The Egongyan Rail Transit Bridge stretches 1.6 kilometers, carrying trains across the landscape on what is the world’s longest suspension bridge dedicated exclusively to metro traffic.
Record #4: The Highest Metro-Only Bridge
At 100 meters above the Jialing River, the Caijia Rail Transit Bridge holds this distinction. On foggy mornings, crossing it feels like riding through the clouds—an ethereal experience that transforms the daily commute into something magical.
Record #5: The Longest Through Arch Bridge
The Chaotianmen Bridge measures 1.7 kilometers in total length, surpassing even Sydney’s iconic Harbor Bridge by about 500 meters.
The Most Famous Feature: The Liziba Station Building Pass-Through
Perhaps no feature captures imaginations quite like the section of Line 2 that passes directly through a residential apartment building on the eighth and ninth floors. This architectural marvel has become an internet sensation, symbolizing Chongqing’s refusal to let obstacles stand in the way of progress.
Decades of False Starts: Why It Took So Long
The dream of a Chongqing metro dates back to the 1940s, but proposal after proposal was abandoned as technically unfeasible or financially impossible. While Beijing and Shanghai built their metro systems in the 1970s and 80s, Chongqing remained stuck with surface transportation.
Everything changed in the late 1980s when a determined task force formed with a singular mission: make this happen. They traveled internationally, studying metros in vertical cities, and learning everything possible about building railways in challenging terrain.
Their breakthrough insight? Conventional rail wasn’t the answer—monorails were.
The Monorail Solution: Why It Changed Everything
The task force’s decision to use monorail technology was revolutionary. Here’s why monorails made perfect sense for Chongqing:
Cost Advantages
Conventional metro systems like Beijing’s cost over $200 million per kilometer to build. Monorail systems? About $100 million per kilometer—cutting expenses in half.
Weight and Support Requirements
Monorail tracks are significantly lighter than conventional rails, requiring fewer support columns when building elevated sections and bridges—crucial in a city where finding stable ground for supports was a constant challenge.
Energy Efficiency
Stations using monorail technology consume approximately one-tenth the energy of conventional rail stations—a massive operational savings.
Performance Characteristics
Monorails excel at tight turns and steep inclines, both abundant in Chongqing’s landscape. They’re also considerably quieter—residents in the apartments that trains pass through experience only about 60 decibels of noise, roughly equivalent to a running dishwasher.
Why Doesn’t Everyone Use Monorails?
If monorails are so advantageous, why aren’t they standard? The answer lies in vertical space. Monorail systems require more height than conventional flat tracks, making them impractical for underground tunnels where excavation costs increase dramatically with tunnel diameter. For Chongqing’s primarily elevated system, this trade-off made perfect sense.
Engineering Marvels: Solving the Unsolvable
The Beam Transport Challenge
Typically, elevated rail construction involves building support columns, then using cranes to position rail sections. In Chongqing’s narrow, sloped streets, traditional cranes were impractical or impossible to deploy.
The solution? Engineers developed specialized beam transport machines that could cradle rail sections, crawl along support columns like mechanical caterpillars, and precisely position each segment—all without requiring the broad, flat staging areas that cranes demand.
The Building Pass-Through Engineering
When Line 2’s path intersected land owned by a construction company with building plans, collaboration resulted in an architectural first. Engineers designed the building with vertical tubes running through its core. Monorail support pillars rose through these tubes with enough clearance that vibrations never touched the surrounding structure—allowing trains and residents to coexist harmoniously.
The Deepest Station Challenge
Hongyancun station alone required three years to complete. Construction workers faced 40-minute round trips just climbing in and out of the excavation site each day—a testament to the extraordinary depths they were working at.
From Opening Day to Today: Continuous Expansion
When Line 2 opened in December 2005, it was mostly elevated with a few underground kilometers. This inaugural line included the now-famous building pass-through and proved the concept could work.
A few years later, a second monorail line opened, immediately setting records as both the longest monorail line in the world and the busiest, with approximately 250 million rides annually.
As the network expanded, planners adopted a mixed approach. The original two lines used monorail technology, but subsequent lines—now totaling twelve, with three more under construction—primarily use conventional rail. This hybrid strategy recognizes that Chongqing’s “8D” landscape demands both elevated sections soaring through the air and deep tunnels burrowing through mountains.
By 2035, the plan calls for 23 total rail lines—nearly double the current network. Who knows what new records these future lines might break?
What Chongqing Teaches Us About Urban Innovation
The Chongqing metro stands as a powerful reminder that urban challenges, no matter how daunting, can be overcome with creative thinking and determination. For decades, conventional wisdom said a metro system in this vertical city was impossible. Engineers proved otherwise by questioning assumptions about how rail systems should work.
Today, millions of residents enjoy a commute that would have seemed like fantasy just a generation ago. They board trains that climb mountains, cross rivers on record-breaking bridges, tunnel deep beneath the earth, and yes, occasionally pass through apartment buildings.
It’s a daily reminder that when cities dare to build infrastructure tailored to their unique circumstances rather than copying standard templates, remarkable things become possible.
The next time your commute feels mundane, remember the residents of Chongqing, riding their roller coaster metro through one of the world’s most vertical cities—proof that engineering ambition, when properly applied, can quite literally move mountains.
This post was generated automatically using LLM.
You can watch the full video from the link below.