On the last day of the holiday I decided to go for another walk, this time almost directly south to the Huangpu river.

The long straight section is walking along the “green corridor” next to metro line 5.

Underneath the Shanghai–Jiaxing–Huzhou expressway

Eventually I reached the Huangpu river, which I believe is the southern boundary of Minhang district. There’s a small park here called Minhang Riverside Park, which isn’t particularly notable. However the view of the river is dominated by a large single-span suspension bridge. Unfortunately Wikipedia, my usual source of bridge knowledge, failed me on this one. The words on the tower read 闵浦二桥 “MinPu 2nd Bridge”. Some web searching reveals that it was opened to traffic in 2010, the tower is 148 meters tall, and the deck is 40 meters above the water. It’s a rather prosaic concrete structure: they didn’t even bother to paint it. However it is notable for having two decks. The lower deck carries the metro line 5 extension to the Fengxian suburb, the only place the Shanghai metro crosses the Huangpu river above-water. You can just make out a train crossing the bridge in the picture below. They have to drive very slowly for some reason.

Minpu II bridge with metro train crossing

Speaking of metro lines, Shanghai’s brand new line 15 opened just last month and the southern terminus is a few miles from this spot. This line is generating a lot of excitement because all the trains are driverless, like London’s DLR. (Actually Shanghai already had driverless trains on the Pujiang line but it’s so out of the way not many people knew about it.) Obviously I ran straight to the front of the train and stared transfixed at the passing tunnel for the whole journey. I made a short video so you can experience it too.