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Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes

(www.sixthtone.com)
491 points anigbrowl | 3 comments | 14 May 25 04:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.627s | source
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zaptheimpaler ◴[14 May 25 05:21 UTC] No.43981102[source]▶
China is the only modern country that has both the capability and the lack of bureaucracy to just do things like this. It's simultaneously amazing to see and a depressing reminder of how badly western societies are crippled by rules of their own making. It would take years to make a single new bus route in any city, I don't think I've ever even seen that happen.
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keiferski ◴[14 May 25 06:20 UTC] No.43981443[source]▶
Check out Warsaw, Poland. Public transit is excellent, clean, and basically gets you anywhere via bus, tram, subway, or one of 4+ ridesharing apps. Bike lane coverage is also pretty good. It's obviously an order of magnitude smaller than Shanghai, but so are most Western cities.

Good overview of the system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kn2tL51bBs&t=8s

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1. xattt ◴[14 May 25 12:59 UTC] No.43984011[source]▶
How does taking transit versus car compare for travel times?

Even in Lisbon, it seemed that public transit was a much bigger hassle, both in time and cost, than a ride-sharing app.

We had a family of 4. Fares are about €3-4 each so €12 per ride in one direction. Ride-shares were about €9. We also abused the intro ride-share offers by creating separate accounts and got that down to €4.50.

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2. keiferski ◴[14 May 25 13:37 UTC] No.43984365[source]▶
Generally I think the subway is much faster if you’re going more than 2-3km, and the tram is slightly faster than cars because you have a designated lane. Tickets are time-based, not trip-based. A 20 minute ticket is about 94 euro cents and an unlimited day pass is maybe 4 euros?

I only use ride sharing for longer 30+ minute trips, and usually that is between 10 and 15 euros one direction.

3. jerven ◴[14 May 25 13:40 UTC] No.43984400[source]▶
4 people, for a short term stay is about where it starts to make sense to ride share. Long term, you would have an longer term pass, vastly reducing the cost of a busride, and you would often travel in smaller groups. So in my experience there are times when bus/tram can be much faster and convenient than a car. Of course there are many cases where it is the other way round (and going out of the cities that ratio changes dramatically for a car). Good city design tends to favor a ratio in favor of public transport over cars.