bridgeair

You could take the maglev, which goes from PVG to Longyang Road station--schedue is here: http://www.smtdc.com/en/jszl1_2.html. At Longyang Road station, you would either take the number 2 line to SHA, or get a taxi to SHA. Either way, I'd allow about 60 minutes for the journey from Longyang Road to SHA.

moondog

Jackal can certainly take the maglev for kicks but I feel compelled to point out that it takes longer to drive from longyang road to sha then pvg to sha.

jackal

OK, so only an hour from Longyang Road to SHA on the subway? That means total transit time including maglev, buying tickets, and everything would be about 90 minutes or so? That's doable and pretty cheap.

Thanks for the link. I'd been looking for something giving the times of day when it runs the fastest to no avail. So the only kink in the plans is that it doesn't run full speed until 9am. Even after waiting for luggage and customs, that probably means sitting around at PVG for over an hour waiting for the maglev to speed up. So allowing 90 minutes to transfer from that point, that would put us arriving at SHA around 10:30 for an 11:50 flight. That's cutting it a bit too close, I think.

Oh well; I'll just have to keep PVG on my list of cities to return to.

moondog

You're not taking the walk from the terminal to the maglev and the wait for the maglev. Plan on two hours. Also note that subway line 2 can be hell (probably mentioned up thread).

jackal

Well, I was assuming we'd be waiting for the 9:02am maglev out at the maglev terminal rather than in the arrival hall. I did sprint that distance last time I was there in like five minutes, since I landed with barely a few minutes to spare until the last maglev of the night departed.

But yes, from the arrival hall and assuming we do have to wait a full 20 minutes for a train, two hours may be a wise assumption. Assuming we clear customs by 8am, that puts us at SHA by 10am for the 11:50 flight, probably good enough.

Also, this is on a Saturday. Will the subway line 2 still be a mess? (Or even worse? )

moondog

Wait. So you've already experienced the Maglev, and you're still contemplating this plan? (I assumed that you wanted to check it out for novelty sake, which is totally understandable.)
Yes. I wouldn't say "worse" though (it's always more or less equally bad).

JPDM

Last time there I had to catch a train for Nanjing from Hongqiao. After passing customs at Pudong to arriving in Hongqiao by Maglev + subway took me 1h15m, nowhere near 2 hours. I had to change my train tickets for an earlier train.
The walk to the Maglev is what? 3 minutes?

moondog

~800 meters. For me, the walk requires 10 minutes assuming I have a luggage cart.

Here is my estimate of the segment by segment timing if you don't dilly dally:

-walk to Maglev = 10 minutes
-wait for Maglev = 10 minutes (midpoint between 0 and 20)
-Maglev = 8 minutes
-walk to subway platform = 5 minutes
-wait for subway = 6 minutes (midpoint between 0 and 12; only every other train goes to E. Xujing)
-subway to Hongqiao T2 = 44 minutes
-walk to check-in counter = 7 minutes

That's a bit over 90 (+/- 15) minutes in total.

anacapamalibu

By the end of next year it should be less than 15 minutes, when they complete
the East Rail to funnel Pudong and Honqiao to the happiest place on Earth.

moondog

How much would you care to wager on this?

anacapamalibu

Does seem odd, they have been working on it for ten years. That's equivalent to 100 years in western time to build a theme park?

Maybe they are waiting until they can buy Disney.

JPDM

Not quite. The announcement was made in 2009 and construction began in 2011.

moondog

I have no doubts about Disney itself opening close to on schedule, but this train thing remains a pipe dream, as far as I'm concerned. It's seemingly following the "plant some articles and hope that it happens" strategy that we've witnessed sputter many times in the past.

jackal

Sorry, I thought I had mentioned that in my previous post:

bridgeair

I checked on Baidu maps, and it says that driving from Longyang Road Station to SHA takes 44 minutes, and going by subway takes 75 minutes. I'd recommend allowing a bit longer than these times though.