40 Minutes for a Taxi at Hongqiao

By Jian Shuo Wang on 2006-12-18 22:49 · Pudong Airport

It took me 90 minutes to fly from Shanghai to Beijing, but it cost more than 40 minutes to walk from the end of the line to the door of a taxi. That is the increasing problem for Hongqiao Airport.

Long Long Lines!

I hesitate to choose Hong Qiao Airport now, especially for the night flights. The public transportation does not really work - there is no metro to Hong Qiao, and there are not many bus route. Taxis seem to be the major transportation for the island of the airport (the airport seems to be an island for me).

Last time I am back from Beijing, I arrived at 9:00 PM, and I waited in the several hundred people line. The line was horrible. When I arrived at the door of a taxi, it was already 9:40 PM. That was almost half way from Shanghai to Beijing.

Improvement? Yes

There WERE some improvement. I observed the management changed lots of approaches on the parking spot to allow more effective pick-up. Now, there are 6 lanes to pick up passengers concurrently. That is much more effective than the 4 lanes in the past, but the demand for taxi increased dramatically. Many flights arrived at the same time, and the airport was like a train station. Hopefully the extension of Shanghai Metro #2 will solve the problem.

18 Comments
Traveling in China during Chinese New Year.
— DKwan · 2006-12-18 23:33
Ummm ignore my last post. Was supposed to go in that "suggest a new topic" post.
— DKwan · 2006-12-18 23:35
yeah,i got the same experience at hongqiao airport,sigh`````
— kaifeng · 2006-12-19 00:22
Why don't you take your own advice (5 Reasons this New Train is Better than Plane) and take the train?
— Давид · 2006-12-19 00:27
It stripped out the HTML code. Here it is:

http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20040801_train_from_beijing_to_shanghai.htm
— Давид · 2006-12-19 00:28
It happened that two weeks before I wrote a blog entry that compared such a scenario in Hongqiao Airport and Beijing Capital Airport. The post is at http://www.fengdingcn.org/blog/20061202/passenger-and-taxi-in-airport.html,

and it is titled " 虹桥机场：人等车 首都机场：车等人".
— Ding Feng · 2006-12-19 01:21
I suggest take the bus at hongqiao airport, then take two station, you get off the bus. you can get the taxi easy at the Road.

many taxi wait there.

shirley
— shirley · 2006-12-19 14:15
Share a tip with you. Take the airport shuttle bus which directly to JingAn Temple, then you may take a cab there or Take metro Line 2 to Pudong...I stay in Pudong not far from where you stay and I am in IT as well, drop me a line if you like to chat.
— James · 2006-12-19 15:28
As I like very much your blog, it gives very interesting news about China and Shanghai (the city I like most), I added the URL of it to my blog. You can find it here http://prechiblog.blogspot.com/

Whish you all the best and best regards from Switzerland.

Peter
— Peter · 2006-12-19 16:32
It's a big problem. Every time I have to walk to Hongqiao road to take a taxi because my home is only 15rmb-taxi fee away from the airport. I don't want to wait for 40 minutes and get a blame from the driver.

I think they should let taxi which deliver passanger in pick up the short distance passanger out.
— majie · 2006-12-19 19:59
You could go directly to the departure floor to get a taix. Normally, you do not have to wait any minute. This approach applies in the PVG as well.
— nicen · 2006-12-20 14:44
I flyed to S'hai from G'zhou much frequently in 2003 and 2004. Internal flight to S'hai usually will arrive at Hongqiao airport, not Pudong airport, except during the 5-month closedown for maintenance. At that time, the transportation condiction had been awful. Obviously, no big improvement has been made during this two years.
— ken jl chao · 2006-12-20 19:41
Yes, nicen, I do that too :-) BE SMART, go against the mainstream.
— carsten · 2006-12-21 10:10
I try many times in Hongqiao Airport, and i do in this way when i travel around china by air. but in hongqiao,you can not always successfully catch a cab in the departure door upstair, it depends, depend on the cab driver individually. there will be a penalty to pick up passengers there. but some cab drives will take the risk if your destination is far enough, in other words, your trip fee is high enough! so i depends.
— ken jl chao · 2006-12-21 15:04
walk out to the gasoline station, (600m away from the airport building), you can even choose Qiangsheng at any time
— ccccc · 2006-12-24 09:18
My approach is to take the minibus-taxi which owned by Jinjiang Taxi, they are parking at the opposite side of the bus station(if it is still bus operating hours, then taking bus to get out of the airport, then changing to a taxi out of the airport would still be a good option), and usually there is not so much passengers to take the minibus taxi, so you would get high chances to just get on the taxi directly withou waiting long time, the only difference is that you've got to pay 3 more bucks or so for flat rate.
— jshang1 · 2006-12-24 15:39
For the benefit of those who take China domestic flights to Hongquio airport and have to transfer to Pudong airport to board an international flight out of the China, there is an express bus service which if I remember correctly is called Pudong Express no. 1...or something to that effect. It runs every 25 minutes but I'm not sure when the first and last service of day is at. It costs RMP$30 and will take around 1 hour 20 minutes .....depending on the highway traffic.

Alternatively you can get a taxi which will cost around RMP$150 and takes around 1 hour depending on traffic condition. The distance between the two airports is around 52km.
— Victor · 2007-10-30 11:42
Further to the comment above, the express bus station is located at the Hongquio airport car park area adjacent to the taxi stand.
— Victor · 2007-10-30 11:50