[Hai Guide] The Inner Ring Road Is Getting Repaired – Here's Where You'll Feel It

If you drive, take a taxi or ride-hail through Shanghai's Xujiahui area at night this summer, expect delays.

Shanghai's Inner Ring Elevated Road is closing lanes overnight from June 22 (Monday) through late October for repairs, and the detours will spill onto streets below.

The Inner Ring Road opened in 1994 as Shanghai's first elevated highway, built with a loan from the World Bank – one of the first Chinese road projects financed that way.

More than three decades of nonstop traffic have worn down the road surface and aged out its equipment faster than routine patching can keep up with, transportation officials said.

The city has been fixing it section by section since 2022. This is the fifth phase.

This round covers 2.5 kilometers between Longhua Road W. and Wuzhong Road, near the Caoxi interchange where the inner ring meets the Humin Elevated Road.

Crews will replace crash barriers and resurface the road deck overnight only, so the road reopens every morning.

What to expect if you're out at night:

June 22-24: The inner ring closes in both directions overnight near Longhua Road W. and Wuzhong Road for prep work.

June 25-August 29: The outer loop closes nightly in that area while crews repair the barriers and resurface the road.

A second phase on the inner loop is expected from early September to late October.

Drivers who'd normally take the Humin Elevated Road onto the inner ring's outer loop should exit early at Guilin Road, or detour via Puhuitang Road, Caoxi Road N. and Nandan Road, since that ramp closes nightly, too.

Below the elevated structure, Zhongshan Road W. is likely to get busier each night as traffic is pushed down to street level.

If you're walking, cycling or taking a taxi through that stretch late at night, Nandan Road E., Xietu Road and Hongqiao Road are the suggested alternates.

Officials considered wiring this stretch for self-driving sensors but decided the road carries too much traffic on too few lanes to experiment with the technology yet.

Space has been left inside the new barriers in case that changes. For now, the road's smart features are limited to a video system that detects incidents and flags them in real time.