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After taking bus to commute in the morning for a little bit more than a week, I realized that buses runs faster than private cars in Shanghai. Even included the time to park at the station, passenger off-load and load, it is still faster than private cars. It takes about 40-50 minutes to arrive in Xujiahui, or 1 hour at peak time. There are several reasons to it.
Public Transportaion Bus has Special Lanes
On Zhaojiabang Road, the right most lane was designated for bus. It has yellow line seperating the lane from the rest.
When I drive my car, I just feel many private cars still often violate the rule, and run on the lane, but when I am on the bus, I feel it is still much faster because of having relatively less cars on the lane. At red stop, when the car lanes have backlog of 1 km, the bus just go ahead and run - run - run until very close to the red light line.
This save the bus much time.
Bus Drivers Drive Wildly
Bus drivers don't follow the traffic rule as strictly as other car drivers. They just drive wildly, and policemen tend not to care about them. Why? I saw some cases when the policeman stops the bus, and the whole bunch of people on the bus surrounded the policeman and protest to ask the policeman release the driver.
Taking the 20 meter road of Jin Xiu Road 锦绣路 and Pujian Road 浦建路 for example. The bus stop was very badly designed. They have a stop at the right side of the road, which is the 5th lane from the left, but most of the buses need to take immediate left turn after they leave the stop. The problem the bus drivers face is, how to pull the car from the inner most lane to the outermost lane in 20 meters - that is only about 4-5 bus longer. The real situation is, in the morning at rush hours, all the lanes are packed with cars to like 1 km long behind this point. If I drive the bus, I may need crush some cars to get there.
The bus driver always have ways. They pull inside the lanes just as if the other cars does not exist, and the solid white line between the lanes do not exist. It is the car driver's job to stop in a rush, or forced to another lane. Anyway, every morning, and for every bus, they can manage to do it. I is a chaos situation, just like a big fish jump into a small pond.
For some bus drivers who cannot get to the left turn lane, don't worry. They simply use the right lane or the straight forward lane to turn left at green light.
The other example is, on Pusan Road 浦三路, I always find my bus running on the left side of the yellow lane, which is running opposite to the traffic... I agree, that is faster.
"Bus is Faster than Car" was posted by Jian Shuo Wang at October 13, 2008 11:00 PM under (Discover Shanghai » Transportation) category. Copyright: You are free to redistribute this work, as long as you keep this disclaimer and this link: http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20081013_bus_is_faster_than_car.htm
Metro is faster than bus... and Shanghai is building a lot.
Good news.
Hi, Jianshuo, traffic problem is a good topic. So far, I did not find any platform to discuss and monitor/improve the transportation situations in Shanghai.
My son, 6.5 year old, takes school bus every workday between school and home. BUT I have big worries about traffic accidents especially when I saw buses and cars on the road DID not obey the rules. How can drivers treat lives LIGHTLY???
Here I appeal, please OBEY traffic rules!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: eric on October 14, 2008 12:24 PMThe same as in Beijing. But there are New traffic measures in Beijing
to improve the transportation.
New road rules to ease beijing traffic congestion
800,000 cars are expected to be taken off Beijing's roads each day, reducing pollution and congestion.
Polls from an auto web site show that many car owners disagree with the new regulations. But officials say there is widespread public support, after an auto ban during the Olympic improved traffic and reduced pollution significantly.
Ha ha
Interesting comments about buses. Some road junctions could definitely be better designed. An example is the junction of Baiyang Road and Longhui Road near Longyang Road metro station. Longhui Road leads to the bus station outside Longyang Road station, but is too narrow for buses to turn into and out of easily. This results in the junction frequently becoming blocked by turning buses and Baiyang Road getting congested. The part of Longhui Road close to the junction should be widened especially since the area next to it is being rebuilt anyway.
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@martin, I agree. There are many places that has presented big challenges for the bus drivers. They have no other choices than - either give up or violate the traffic rules.
Posted by: Jian Shuo Wang (external link) on October 16, 2008 10:03 AM