The Shanghai Metro company announced that services will be suspended on half of Line 4, the circular line, over the Spring Festival Break. The work is necessary due to subsidence at Hailun Road Station.

Line 4 will temporarily operate on the segment between Yishan Road and Linping Road only. On most of the missing section, this won’t be too much of a problem as Line 3 services call at all stations between Baoshan Road and Yishan Road. However note that Linping Road is now something of a dead-end (click to enlarge map).

The shutdown will last from January 23 to 28. Normal operations will resume after the holidays.

We’re proud to announce that Explore Shanghai is the second of our award-winning subway maps for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch to reach version 6.0

With version 6.0 we re-wrote the map code from the ground up to be faster. The app now loads quicker, and zooming in and out should be smooth, even on older devices.

The other big new feature is tips. Ever wondered what points of interest are close to a subway stop? Now you can tap on any station, then tap on Tips to see what’s nearby. We’ve even included bus information for every metro station: check Tips to see which buses stop in the vicinity of the metro station.

Tap the thumbs up button on any tip which you find useful. And if you know a great local restaurant, attraction or a clever shortcut, you can add your own tip:

You can also view a list of the most popular tips for the whole city.

Explore Shanghai 6.0 is a free update for existing users. Not got Explore Shanghai yet? Download it now from the iTunes App Store.

Shanghai Metro Line 22 will connect Shanghai South Railway Station with Jinshan, home of the closest sandy beach to downtown Shanghai. Not that it will likely be beach-going weather when the line opens in late December, 2011.

The new line will have 9 stations, connecting with Line 1 and 3 at Shanghai Railway Station, and Line 1 and Line 5 at a new transport hub at Xinzhuang in Minghang District. The line then heads south into Songjiang and Jinshan Districts. The stations, from north to south:

• 上海南站 Shanghai South Railway Station (interchange with Line 1 and Line 3)
• 莘庄 Xinzhuang (interchange with Line 1 and Line 5)
• 春申 Chunshen
• 新桥 Xinqiao
• 闵西 Minxi
• 叶榭 Yexie
• 亭林 Tinglin
• 阮巷 Ruanxiang
• 金山 Jinshan

Three new items which caught our eye

• Remember the guy who shouted BOMB! on a crowded metro train? He’s been jailed for 18 months
• Some Shanghai bus stops are getting displays to tell you when the next bus is coming
• Hold on to your iPhones while the doors are closing to avoid grab-and-run thefts

• Shanghaiist has a good round-up of news after the crash on Shanghai’s Metro Line 10. Power failure and human error are said to have caused the crash.
• In Beijing, a new interchange passageway has shortened transfer times at the notoriously slow Xizhimen station
• Singapore’s Circle Line will be extended, with the official opening on October 8. We’ll blog about the changes to Explore Singapore later in the week.

• Two roads in downtown Shanghai (Qufu Road and Damuqiao Road) close to make way for Line 12 metro construction
• On October 2 you’ll be able to take free rides on Singapore’s expanded Circle Line. The official opening is October 8.
• Read a review of our iPhone apps on SimonBlog

Happy Mid-Autumn festival to all ExploreMetro fans! Here’s a special holiday treat for you metro-lovers. We’ve made an anagrammed version of the 2011 Shanghai Metro map, scrambling the letters of the English names of all stations for comic effect.

Click below for the full PDF metro map, here are some of our favorites:

• Haha, brainy girls = Shanghai Library
• Huge Shoe healing Communist Ascendancy  = Shanghai Science and Technology Museum
• Mouse came up arse = Aerospace Museum
• Odd anagram = Madang Road

Back in 2008 I created the first anagrammed map of the Shanghai Metro. Since then the Shanghai Metro has added lots of new stations and lines and is now the longest metro system in the world, so I thought it was about time to bring the anagram map up to date!

Note for pedants: I used the common English name of the station as posted on signboards, spelling out directions e.g. South Lingyan Road. For some challenging stations (particularly the ones with lots of Xs and Zs I added “station” e.g. Dongjing Station -> Standing, I jog not.)

The Shanghai Metro company announced that Shanghai Metro Line 2 will have increased service from Thursday 1st September!

More frequent trains!

• On the central part of the line. trains will now run every 3.5 minutes, down from 4 minutes
• On the eastern part of the line, trains between Guanglan Road and Pudong International Airport will run every 8 minutes, down from 9.5 minutes
• On the western part of the line, trains between Songhong Road to East Xujing Station via Hongqiao Airport will run every 6.5 minutes, down from 10 minutes

• Trains to Pudong International Airport will run for 90 minutes more each day: new service hours are 6am to 10pm.
• Extra trains from Guanglan Road to Yuandong Avenue, running until 10.42pm
• Two extra trains from Hongqiao Railway Station and Hongqiao Airport to Longyang Road, departing at 11.04pm and 11.20pm

We’re working on a useful new feature for our iPhone apps which we think you’ll find really useful.

When you tap to hear the audio pronunciation for a station, you’ll also see the Pinyin for the station name, complete with tone marks. This is really handy for stations with alternative English names, for example:

People’s Square (Rénmín Guǎngchǎng)

Oriental Sports Center (Dōngfāng Tǐyù Zhōngxīn )

We’ve already added the Pinyin pronunciations to the Shanghai Metropedia pages. We’ll be launching the feature for our Shanghai app soon, followed by our other China metro apps.

Helping you get to your destination faster, and learn some Chinese en route

CNNgo have published a list of their 10 best apps for living in Shanghai, and Explore Shanghai is ranked #1

Read the full article on CNNgo for the full list