Sunday, May 28, 2006
The Bus System in Shanghai
There are 45000 Taxis in Shanghai - but also plenty of buses. The metro system is still not able to cover most areas of the town so buses are the only alternative. Though people that can afford it prefer a taxi.
The quality of bus transport improved a bit over the last months. A new regulation about exhausts made the worst ones vanish.
Still - they are often overcrowded (but cheap - 1 to 2 RMB) and they look really bad.
You can see here a bus with air condition. The ones without aircon are cheaper.
Here another one at the bus stop. As you can see they have plenty of advertisement on the buses - which sometimes seems to be the only thing that keeps that thing together. You can also see here a VW Passat taxi from Dazhong Taxi - one of the very few in town.
The buses are not owned by the town - they are operated by private companies (Dazhong and BaShi are the biggest ones - they also operate taxis). They get these 2 RMB that you have to pay to the conductor. I really wonder how they can make any profit with this, though if you see the buses this must be clear.
This last picture shows the signs at a bus stop. It shows plenty of information about the lines and which company operates the line. Difficult to find out, where this bus goes...
I took only one time a bus, at that was the airport bus.
The worst buses really seem to be gone by now. I had some bad experiences with buses in front of me when I took a taxi through the tunnel. I sometimes was not able to see anything because of the black cloud behind them (some say these are James Bond-Buses).
The quality of bus transport improved a bit over the last months. A new regulation about exhausts made the worst ones vanish.
Still - they are often overcrowded (but cheap - 1 to 2 RMB) and they look really bad.
You can see here a bus with air condition. The ones without aircon are cheaper.
Here another one at the bus stop. As you can see they have plenty of advertisement on the buses - which sometimes seems to be the only thing that keeps that thing together. You can also see here a VW Passat taxi from Dazhong Taxi - one of the very few in town.
The buses are not owned by the town - they are operated by private companies (Dazhong and BaShi are the biggest ones - they also operate taxis). They get these 2 RMB that you have to pay to the conductor. I really wonder how they can make any profit with this, though if you see the buses this must be clear.
This last picture shows the signs at a bus stop. It shows plenty of information about the lines and which company operates the line. Difficult to find out, where this bus goes...
I took only one time a bus, at that was the airport bus.
The worst buses really seem to be gone by now. I had some bad experiences with buses in front of me when I took a taxi through the tunnel. I sometimes was not able to see anything because of the black cloud behind them (some say these are James Bond-Buses).
