I spent the weekend in Shanghai a couple of months ago and used the Metro to get around. It was modern, clean, on time, easy, and cheap - around €10 for an unlimited 72 hour pass. I was astonished by its sprawl, some lines over 50km and one close to 100km. It felt like it dwarfs London's tube.
Criticisms? It was clearly at or near capacity, which I guess explains the rapid growth. There was a mass of security theatre, X-ray machines at the entrances to some (most?) lines but lots of people were just ignoring the attendants and walking quickly passed the machines without having their bags checked. It seemed difficult (impossible?) to pay with anything but cash, at least at the stations I visited all machines were cash only (I guess not so modern after all).
In the Shanghai's metro, I was really impressed by the ads using persistence of vision in the tunnels :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsdF834vXkQ&t=0m32s The quality is better in person than in this video, because the camera's shutter speed creates artifacts.
> There was a mass of security theatre, X-ray machines at the entrances to some (most?) lines but lots of people were just ignoring the attendants and walking quickly passed the machines without having their bags checked.
Yes, that’s the main difference between Beijing and Shanghai’s metro system. In Beijing, there is no way to avoid security check and everyone obeys, while Shanghai didn’t enforce that and everyone learned to ignore that.
Then again, there are people arguing that the security measures in neither systems are very effective.
That is just China in general. Their only card based payments for quite some time was UnionPay. Many places were cash only though. In the past 2-3 years electronic payments through WeChat or Alipay have absolutely exploded and nearly every business accepts it as payment in major cities. Unfortunately as a westerner these payment methods are mostly inaccessible, so cash payment remains the only feasible way to pay for most things.
It always makes me think about how when cities or nations get more wealth, they seem to value different things. Wealthier East Asian cities consistently have great public transport.
Is it just a population density thing, that there's so many people zipping around in such a small area that it pays off to spend the money on infrastructure? Is it a lower cost of labour thing? Or is it a thing that people value more and demand? I'm never quite sure.
> It seemed difficult (impossible?) to pay with anything but cash
That's true and it is not convenient for visitors. Local people usually just use public transportation card (magnetic/contact-less smart card) everyday and don't have to pay with cash (you can charge the card with credit card or Alipay). Some station gates also support paying with NFC smartphones (eg. Xiaomi), and I think that's modern :-)
It's not too hard, with a bit of diligence (and a phrasebook), to get a contactless card as a foreigner. Although it is still easiest to add value with cash through one of the station attendant booths.
It will be interesting to see how long China's frenetic metro expansion lasts. Japan went through a very similar phase after the war, but this slowed down markedly after the Bubble burst. With population growth now strongly negative, there's no business case for building more and Japan completed what's likely its last line a few years ago.
China, too, faces an upcoming and likely even more severe population crunch. India, on the other hand, is only just getting started and is now building metros with a similar pace as China in the 1990s.
Just the increase of the urbanization degree from the current 56% to 70% in 10 to 15 years, as currently planned by the government, will increase the city population by almost 200 million.
But unlike Japan, isn't China's infrastructure still well below demand (there were some articles about 3+ hour commutes in greater Beijing posted to HN some months ago)?
Even if demand will flatline and then slowly decline, they'd still need to build loads just to meet it adequately.
I stayed in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Taipei over the summer last year. Taipei's metro is the best overall; certainly not as crowded as the other two. Convenience is about the same, i.e. payable by cash-loading debit cards. Tokyo's metro have gotten old. I honestly think, a couple of Tokyo's underground lines need to be replaced.
Just remember, no food allowed in transit.
Taipeis metro blew my mind when I first encountered it as well. And yeap, no eating, no drinking water, and they also have signs telling you not to talk on your cellphone.
Same will be true for China and Taiwan as well, very shortly. I hope for their sake they're paying close attention to how Japan has dealt with a shrinking population - Japan really has been the "pioneer" in a process that all countries will have to inevitably go through.
A little misleading in regard to, at least, Tokyo, as it shows only two lines, Tokyo Metro and Toei. The transportation system is much, much vaster than only those two lines.
Criticisms? It was clearly at or near capacity, which I guess explains the rapid growth. There was a mass of security theatre, X-ray machines at the entrances to some (most?) lines but lots of people were just ignoring the attendants and walking quickly passed the machines without having their bags checked. It seemed difficult (impossible?) to pay with anything but cash, at least at the stations I visited all machines were cash only (I guess not so modern after all).