Introduction
Although many people would rather take taxis and metro as their transportation tools because of the convenience and swiftness, most of people in Shanghai still take buses as their first transportation choice in their daily life because of its high cost-efficiency. Actually it’s a very good choice because most of buses in Shanghai are new, clean, air-conditioned, environment friendly -- their exhaust emissions meet Euro II standard. You can also see express lanes for buses in the downtown which are built to guarantee the transportation speed, especially during peak hour.
Altogether there are more than 1,000 formal bus lines operated by 20 companies among which Dazhong,Bashi, Qiangsheng and Guanzhong are the 4 biggest ones.
Bus Lines
Buses in Shanghai are usually named in Chinese characters or numbers, and can be generally classified into the following categories:
1. Line numbers under 200---Downtown Conventional Lines: In these buses, lines under 30 are trolleybuses with the exception of those starting with 0 and Line 18, 21. There are some air-conditioned buses in trolley lines.
2. Line numbers between 200 and 299 ---Rush Hour Lines: These buses, not including those numbers are used for conventional buses, mostly run during the rush hours.
3. Line numbers between 300 and 399--- Night Buses
4. Line numbers between 400 and 499--- Cross-River Lines
5. Line numbers between 500 and 599
6. Line numbers between 800 and 899
7. Line numbers between 900 and 999 --- Special Lines
8. Line numbers between 700 and 799--- Suburban Conventional lines
9. Line numbers between 600 and 699---Pudong New District Special Lines
10. Suburban Lines--- usually named by Chinese characters combined by abbreviation of the first and terminal stations' names
