[Quick News] Work From Home, Metro Closures, Expected Red Alerts

Shanghai is shutting down large portions of the subway tomorrow

Typhoon Dolphin has made a second landing in nearby Zhejiang Province, and is currently battering Shanghai. The city has just announced large closures of Shanghai's metro. That is not a drill. That is the Shanghai Metro deciding, in advance, that Monday morning is not worth the risk.

Be sure to share this with your colleagues and friends so they can make their plans to either work from home or adjust their travel arrangements.

Rainstorm warning expected to escalate to orange warning level overnight

Here is what is actually happening. The rainstorm warning, currently yellow, is expected to go orange sometime Monday afternoon, and parts of the city could see Red Alerts (the city's highest warning level). Based on that forecast, the transport commission and the police have drawn up a full battle plan for August 10, and it is worth reading closely if you have anywhere to be.

Full Metro closures:

Four lines are simply gone for the day. Line 3, Line 5, Line 16, and the Pujiang Line will not run at all, full stop, no restart time given. If your commute touches any of those, you already know it is not happening, so make other plans now instead of finding out on the platform.

Partial Metro closures

Four more lines are getting the scissors instead of the axe.

Line 1 will only run between Xinzhuang and Shanghai Railway Station.

Line 2 shrinks down to Panxiang Road·Shanghai National Accounting Institute through Longyang Road, which means anyone counting on it to reach Pudong Airport is going to need a new plan and probably a taxi budget.

Line 6 keeps running from Yunshan Road to Oriental Sports Center but drops the Gangcheng Road end entirely.

Line 10 still connects from both Hongqiao Railway Station and Hangzhong Road through to Xinjiangwancheng, but the stretch out to Jilong Road is dark.

Everything else that stays open is not exactly open either.

Line 1 between Xinzhuang and Shanghai South Railway Station, plus lines 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 17, and the airport line, will all crawl along at reduced speed wherever the tracks run above ground or on elevated sections, and the city has already warned it might tighten that further or shut segments outright depending on how the weather actually behaves. Nobody is promising you a normal Monday.

Boats and ferries

Boats are simpler: nothing floats tomorrow. The three island ferries, the city ferry routes, the Huangpu River sightseeing cruises, the Suzhou Creek tours, all suspended for the day. And because the ferries are down, the city has opened four road tunnels: Changjiang Road, Dalian Road, Fuxing Road E., and Yindu Road, to non-motorized traffic so people who normally cross the river by boat still have a way to get to the other side without a car.

Roads

Roads get their own tiered response. Expressways drop to 60 kilometers an hour under the yellow rainstorm warning. HOWEVER, if the city's warning level escalates to orange, that speed limit slows to 40 kilometers an hour. Under a red warning level, they can close outright depending on conditions. The Yangtze River Bridge and the Donghai Bridge will shut if winds hit force nine or above. Flooded roads are handled as they happen, with real-time updates and temporary closures rather than a fixed list, because nobody yet knows exactly where the water will pool.

Avoid travel; official city guidance is to encourage work from home

None of this is optional advice dressed up as a suggestion. The official guidance is blunt: watch the road conditions, slow down, do what the traffic police tell you, and skip the trip if you do not need to make it. If you have work tomorrow, the official city guidance is to encourage people to work from home (鼓励居家办公).

China's labor protections are some of the strongest worldwide

There is a labor protection built into all of this, worth knowing whether you are the boss or the employee: if the typhoon makes you late or keeps you out entirely, your employer cannot mark you absent, cannot dock your pay or benefits, cannot make you burn a public holiday or a rest day to cover it, and cannot discipline or fire you over it. That is not a suggestion. That language comes almost word for word from a 2019 Shanghai municipal government policy, the Implementation Opinions on School Suspension Arrangements and Work Absence Handling for Extreme Weather Response (关于本市应对极端天气停课安排和误工处理的实施意见), and it kicks in specifically once a red alert level warning is declared for typhoons, rainstorms, snowstorms, or icy roads. Sunday's notice is just the city reminding everyone that the rule already exists and applies here.

Things will ease up Monday afternoon

The one piece of good news in all of this: Forecasters expect the wind and rain to ease off by Monday afternoon, so this looks like a one-shift problem rather than a multi-day one. Keep an eye on the actual updates as the storm moves through, because everything above is subject to change the moment the weather decides it wants to be worse than advertised.