life - Why connect Shanghai subway lines so poorly?

Shanghai subway map

Fellow blogger Wang Jianshuo went to the subway station at People's Square earlier in the week, wondering why line one and two connect so badly. A few years ago I could ask officials of the Shanghai Construction Commission that question that bothers tens of thousands of travellers every day. In the early days of the Shanghai subway, there was not yet a huge masterplan as there is now.
As some of us might recall, the first subway line was heavily subsidized by the German government. The Germans at that time thought it was a nice way to develop their relationship with the Shanghai municipality.
"We were so surprised and excited we got the deal," said one of the people involved at the Shanghai-end of the negotiations. "We really never thought we would ever have a second subway line. So we did not bother to think about how they should ever connect."
The German proved to be generous again when the second line was discussed, although they paid less than for the first line. But then Shanghai realized it had a problem in connecting the two and had to build a second subway station on People's Square. Initially, the two even operated as seperate lines and you had to buy new tickets when switching.
When you see how later the Pearl Line connected to line one and two, could see that the learning curve in Shanghai was not very steep. Have not checked the new lines yet, but will do so when the weather gets better.
The German left after the second line the priviledge of funding Shanghai's public transport to other countries, until of course they wanted to build the transrapid or Maglev, but that is a different story.