Shanghai subway [上海地铁]
I take subway to work everyday, it takes around 30 minutes to go a dozen stations. Generally the waiting time is less than a minute but I have to transit between line 1 and line 2, so it takes a bit longer sometime. At the target station there is a special bus that takes us to IBM building, and back to subway at day end.
Without looking at the official statistics, I estimate that the Shanghai subway network carry at least 100 times more people everyday compare to Montreal subway. The population is roughly 10 times more people at Shanghai than at Montreal, but there are proportionally much less car owners here, and many car owners don’t go to work with their car because of lack of parking space in high density areas, and the traffic is quite slow during rush hour.
Subway confort level
In general the Shanghai subway is more confortable than Montreal subway, it has air conditioning, more stable, cell phone connectivity, less noisy (can talk on the phone), cleaner, faster, less waiting, etc. Simply speaking it is more modern, better maintain and managed, and profitable because of the much higher volume of passengers.
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Rush hour
At rush hour it’s a different story… Unfortunately, technical superiority doesn’t offset the biggest problem of Shanghai subway, and all other public transport as well: people’s attitude. On the waiting deck, there are signs and guards everywhere to tell people to wait for passengers to get off first, then get on in order. However, nobody really care about those signs, they line up all in front of the door, push in as soon as the door open, that makes it very hard for people to get off and everybody end up pushing each other. This scene happens at every single door of every single train during the entire rush hour!
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I can see from the body expression of many people that they really dislike this situation, especially the locals and more educated ones. Unfortunately there are a great number of people from other Chinese cities and villages who work at Shanghai, many of them have a lower living standard and don’t mind pushing shoulder to shoulder, they simply don’t feel any problem about that… They’re not going away any time soon, so we’ll have to live with them and educate them.
Large stations
Naturally there are some stations more crowd than others, those are either transit station or high density area or major commercial center. For example at the People Square station, during rush hour, there are at least 5000 people getting off every single train, and there is a train at roughly every minute from 8:00am to 9:30am, and 5:00pm to 6:30pm. Observing the amount of people getting on and off at that station is simply amazing. There are more people at every minute here than there are people using the Montreal subway during the Summer firework competition (most rush moment of the year).
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Transit
Transiting between two lines involve more walking here than at Montreal. The stations of each line are close to each other, but never at the same spot, it’s usually one or two blocks away. So passengers have to walk that distance underground. When there are 5000 people getting off at the same time, it becomes a challenge to walk that distance, sometime I can only make half steps because the pace is too slow. Sometime I feel like I’m marching with an army, when everyone’s foot step is synchronized. Some people read newspaper while transitting, some eat, some sing (with iPod in their ears), some talk on the phone, it’s funny to observe the scene.
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Inside the train
It’s quite nice inside the train, there are high quality adds and TV commercials. Since all the train are connected with passthru (no door between wagon), there are street sellers walking around selling newspapers and flowers during non rush hour. But during rush hour, you can hardly pull your hands up or down, and you get to smell the person in front of you if you’re not the tallest one.
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I have to admit that, so far for what I’ve observed, the local Shanghaineses maintain their hair pretty well (especially ladies), it doesn’t sting, and there are less balds…
Price
It costs between 3 to 5 RMB (less than 1$can) to take the subway, depending on the distance taken. The charge is being made when you get out of the subway, it takes into account the original station and final destination, so you have to keep your original ticket during the whole trip.
There is no monthly unlimited ticket, you pay for every trip. There is a very convenient transport card here, you simply charge money inside it, then use it for subway, bus, taxi, and some other stuff as well. Or you can buy a one-time ticket as well, of course.
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Anecdote
One time I was waiting for the subway, saw a tall blond lady waiting in line as well. I told myself, she will have trouble getting in, because it was rush hour at a major station. When the train arrived, it was really crowd and many people are pushing hard to get in, I couldn’t make it so stepped back to wait for the next one. Then surprisingly I saw that lady was already inside. Damn, how could she make it while I couldn’t? Maybe I was being too polite? Maybe I should push a bit harder? I realized that I was more westerner than a white blond! Geez.
May 8th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
positive way of looking at shanghai daily life. you are a nice guy.