In the early morning of August 20, the first batch of passengers began to board the Wuhan Metro Line 1, marking that the Phase I overhaul and reconstruction project of Wuhan Metro Line 1 was officially put into operation.

Wuhan Metro Line 1 is the first rail transit line in Hubei Province, which was put into operation on July 28, 2004. As the first CBTC metro line in China, Wuhan Metro Line 1 has changed the traditional metro signaling control mode in China, and provided a valuable reference for the subsequent digital upgrading and conversion of Chinese metro signaling systems.

As the first signalling system conversion project of Wuhan Metro, the Phase I overhaul and reconstruction project of Wuhan Line 1 involves the following control areas: four Phase I equipment centralized stations, two border centralized stations, as well as the upgrading and reconstruction of central VCC1 and VCC2. The main hardware upgrades include: the central VCC1 and VCC2 equipment (upgraded from the 2nd generation to the 3rd generation), the trackside VCC1 STC equipment (upgraded from the 2nd generation to the 3rd generation), and the trackside VCC1 axle counting equipment (upgraded from ZP30C to ZP30H).  

As a metro line passing through multiple bustling business districts in Wuhan, Metro Line 1 transports a large number of passengers on a daily basis. With the cooperation of Wuhan Metro, Thales SEC Transport formulated the implementation strategy of “Partial before Overall, and ATC before Backup” through reasonable planning and in-depth research, overcame multiple difficulties in the implementation, and successfully completed the overhaul and reconstruction project with the goal of ensuring “Major Equipment Upgrade, Uninterrupted Operation, and No Impact on Passengers”. At the same time, Thales SEC Transport has greatly improved the system performance by applying techniques such as serial optical communication conversion and redundancy self-test optimization, while ensuring the performance of existing systems.