Both tenants and landlords will need to plan ahead for increasingly crowded conditions at the Lujiazui metro station in the coming few years, as the number of commuters dependent on the station may rise as much as 60% over the next 3 years.

Lujiazui Metro Station, on Shanghai’s Metro Line 2, is the most important commuter access point for the booming financial district in Pudong. The office supply boom in the area will result in significant overcrowding of the metro platform and access points. Tenants and landlords may need to consider shuttle buses to other nearby stations or staggering the workday starting times by 2013 or 2014, until the completion of an additional metro line (Line 14) provides relief sometime in 2014.

At the time of its completion in 2000, the metro station had ample excess capacity and was surrounded largely by empty plots. Today, Lujiazui station is already extremely busy at peak hours. By end-2014, another 787,000 sqm of office will be completed near the station, bringing thousands of additional office workers into the area. While some are coming in on cars and buses, the majority are arriving on Metro Line 2. Many of the new Lujiazui workers will be in the new insurance and bank towers which are consolidations of offices from elsewhere in the city.

To calculate the increased traffic at the metro station, I estimated the physically occupied space in each nearby building. By year end-2014, most buildings will be virtually full, with the Shanghai Tower megaproject in the process of handing over. Adjusting for the distance to the Lujiazui station versus other nearby stations like Dongchang Road that may be viable alternatives, the outcome is that the physically occupied space attributable to Lujiazui station goes up 60% by end-2014. In the best-case scenario, assuming more commuters shift to other forms of transportation, the increase could be as low as 25-35%, but this is still cause for concern.

The next metro stop to be built to directly serve the Little Lujiazui area will be Line 14, expected in 2014 at earliest. Until then, landlords and tenants in the area will need to plan for ways to make the morning commute smoother for thousands of financial sector workers to ensure their buildings and workplaces can remain competitive.

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