Shanghai Pudong International Airport

An computer-generated aerial view of the huge transport hub

Interior view of the expansions, completed in 2008

Shanghai Pudong International Airport is the world’s third busiest airport by cargo capacity and, after serving 40,578,621 passengers in 2012, the 20^th busiest airport by passenger traffic.

The airport underwent a major expansion programme beginning in 2005 in order to prepare for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The expansion included some revolutionary features, such as a $1.5 million lighting system. The system is directly linked to the arrivals and departures information so that it lights up a gate when an aircraft is expected to arrive or depart.

130 CCTV cameras around the airport monitor traffic flow. When it is found that there is a bottleneck anywhere in the airport, the direction signs automatically change to guide passengers through a different route to their gate.

The air conditioning system uses enough water to fill around 150 Olympic swimming pools. To save costs, engineers used river water and filtered it with plants’ roots to collect the water.

When current expansions are completed in 2015, the airport and its train hub will be able to serve 1.5 million passengers daily.

Pudong Airport is connected to a dramatic link of transport routes. Four different loop roads (completely independent of each other) send cars to the correct terminal and there is also an underground metro station. Alternatively, passengers can use the Maglev train. This transports passengers from central Shanghai to the airport at around 450km/h (280mph).



A Maglev train leaving the airport



The Maglev station is built directly above the metro station. In order to prevent vibrations from the metro trains disrupting the delicate Maglev, engineers built a concrete layer deep enough to bury a tank below the Maglev platform.

For clarification, Maglev (magnetic levitation) is a technology developed in Germany. The train essentially glides on the rail and is propelled forward by strong magnetic waves. This makes the journey frictionless and very smooth.