As a pipe jacking machine pushed throughJing’an Temple Station, the entire tube of Metro Line 14 was cleared, Shanghai Metro said yesterday.

The line, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year, is now ready for the next stage of construction, including rail paving and trial runs of trains, the company said.

Metro Line 14, which linksFengbanginsuburban JiadingDistrict andJinqiaoin the Pudong New Area and passes throughPutuo,Jing’an and Huangpu districts, will be the last Metro line in the city’s central districts to have trains with eight carriages as a large number of passengers are expected.

Digging at theJing’an Temple Station, which is an interchange station with Lines 2 and 7 in theJing’an Temple commercial hub near Yan’an Elevated Road, was especially challenging.

To reduce the influence of the construction on nearby traffic, the company used a method called pipe jacking.

This was also the first downtown Metro station in an area with soft soil constructed using this method, according to the company.

Special construction solutions were also sought for Guiqiao Road, WudingRoad and Pudong Avenue stations, as the Metro line passes some of the busiest commercial hubs in the city.

TheYuyuanGarden Station on the line will become the deepest Metro station in Shanghai at 36 meters.

The ChangyiRoad Station, with a depth of 35.4 meters, is the deepest Metro station under construction in Pudong with a few other infrastructure projects being built on the same spot at the same time, the company said.

Also, in Pudong, six stations on the line, from South Pudong Road toLongjuRoad stations, which are distributed along Pudong Avenue, were constructed alongside the Pudong part of the “East-West Passage,” a key road traffic infrastructure project that will provide a fast link fromYan’an Elevated Road to Pudong Avenue.

At the Pudong Avenue Station, the operation of Line 4 was not affected although the ceiling of the entrance hall of the station was being shifted due to changes made to the busy traffic junction after the joining of Line 14.

Previously, Shanghai Metro said the ground sinking as a result from the tunnel digging work was measured at only a few millimeters.

There will be 31 underground stations on Metro Line 14, which is 38.5 kilometers long. The line interchanges with 13 other Metro lines.

Shanghai’s Metro network, the largest in the world, has 459 stations and 772 kilometers of rail lines.

The construction of the remaining part of the phase 1 of Metro Line 18 is also expected to be completed by the end of this year.

The 36.8km, 26-station Metro Line 18 starts at South Changjiang Road in the north and runs through Baoshan andYangpudistricts and Pudong.

The first eight stations in the south, from Yuqiao to Hangtou, have already opened.