Globally First-ever Automated People Mover Opened to Traffic in Bishan, Chongqing

On the morning of April 16, UCD, as the general survey and design contractor, saw its world’s first Automated People Mover (rubber-wheeled tram) officially opened to traffic in Bishan, Chongqing.

All leaders of Bishan District, experts from China Association of Metros, leaders from all parties involved in the construction, and UCD’s Technical Director Wu Jianzhong, attended the opening ceremony.

The main line of the demonstration line is 15.4 kilometers in length, with a total of 15 stations. With a battery-powered, unmanned integrated dispatch system, the line has a transport capacity of 6,000 people per hour. Construction kicked off in August 2019 and the trial operation started in September 2020. With such advantages as small turning radius (minimum radius only 15 meters), strong climbing ability (up to 12%), low noise, low vibration, high safety, flexible laying methods, etc., the Automated People Mover can carry 6000 to 10000 people per hour. With its maximum operating speed being 80 kilometers per hour, the Automated People Mover has such advantages as low construction cost and short construction period as compared to the traditional light rail and subway. Fully autonomous, the Automated People Mover has reached the highest level of fully automatic operation in the world and can realize face recognition, and passengers can enter the station without feeling. Its independent right-of-way three-dimensional intelligent transportation system has effectively filled the gap in the domestic small and medium-volume rail transportation system, and has facilitated the new upgrade of urban transportation modes.

As a low-volume rail transit, the Automated People Mover is sensitive to operating costs and calls for high system cost performance. Without mature design experience, the project design team completed technological breakthroughs time after time, and successfully created a set of exclusive Automated People Mover construction modes: from the selection of routes and alignments to the study of operation and management modes; station standardization, lightweight and assembly; completed the technical standards for section track beams, lightweight, and long-span track beam structure; innovated the section evacuation mode; established the idea of curved turnouts and effectively reduced the cost; replaced professional requirements with functional requirements to integrate station equipment and reduced room area of the equipment of the stations; established the platform structure with driving and power dispatch as the core and deep multi-professional, multi-business, and multi-system such as FAS, ACS, BAS, video surveillance, platform doors, etc., based on the concept of de-station and strong centralization. The platform architecture has substantially reduced the physical interfaces between devices.

The completion of the Bishan Automated People Mover Demonstration Line has once again manifested UCD's pioneering spirit of being bold in exploration and innovation. While accumulating the performance and experiences in medium and low-volume rail transit systems for UCD, the Automated People Mover has further expanded UCD’s influence and consolidated its status in the industry.