Monthly Archive for May, 2008

Day 45: Stupid Line 9

Line 9You know what’s lame? Shanghai Metro’s Line 9. The Line 9 bus ser­vice, which cov­ers the miss­ing seg­ment (Yishan Road to Guilin Road) sep­a­rat­ing the line from the rest of the metro sys­tem, ends two hours be­fore the metro ser­vice ends. Line 9 metro ser­vice ends at 10:30 PM, but af­ter 8:30 peo­ple com­ing from the rest of the metro sys­tem (ba­si­cally the rest of Shanghai) can’t even get on it. [June 13 up­date: Apparently Line 9 ended at 9:00 PM. I guess the 8:30 end time for the bus made sense then. Line 9 now ends at 9:15.]

I had to get turned around twice to find out, be­cause the first time was af­ter 10:30 and I fig­ured I just had to get there be­fore the Line 9 ser­vice ended next time. Well to my sur­prise, no bus ser­vice at 8:45 tonight ei­ther. Me and oth­ers who got off there were like wtf, so I asked the guy there and he’s like the Line 9 bus has al­ways ended at 8:30.

They should post up a big sign some­where, or at least an­nounce it on Line 3 which takes peo­ple to Line 9, be­cause I bet every few min­utes of every­day af­ter 8:30, a new group of con­fused peo­ple have to find an­other way home.

By the way, this web­site is awe­some: www.exploreshanghai.com/metro. Click and drag from one stop to an­other stop to see the es­ti­mated travel time. According to their blog, Line 9’s ser­vice should be ex­tended a bit start­ing to­mor­row, but it doesn’t say if that in­cludes Line 9’s bus service.