Originally Posted by
LHR/MEL/Europe FF
As a resident of shanghai the benefit of taxi + maglev was that it left from my door, and the connection was fairly easy at longyang lu. Maybe if you were staying beside a line 2 metro station it might be viable to take the subway first, but otherwise agree, not much of a benefit.
For me, getting to Longyang Road is a 30 minute drill, then I need to wait up to 20 minutes for the Maglev. While it's true that the Maglev itself covers that useless journey in 8 minutes, the entire ordeal simply isn't worth it to me.
HKG is my most common route these days, and I always try to fly out of Hongqiao (15 minute subway ride), but the fare difference v PVG is often hard to justify. As I mentioned upthread, I don't mind flying back to PVG, and taking the bus to JA because JA is a great place to unwind post trip.