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Been in Chengdu and 2 other county level rural cities for a week.
I'll now relate what I experienced.
I cleared the customs and immigration at Chengdu Airport in less than 10 minutes. The custom officer was fairly friendly and smiled - the experience was better than what I've experienced in Shanghai 10 years ago but Shanghai is a much larger city and the airport was busier. Checking in on the return trip took much longer, I was in the economy class queue for at least 1 hour - I was at the Airport 2.5 hours before but the ticketing counter opened only about 1.5 hours before the flight.
After clearing customs, I called the airport hotel and the hotel shuttle came in 10 minutes. Hotel check-in took 3-5 minutes as was the case with all the hotels (1-3 star hotels/motels) I visited during my trip, check-in and check-out were almost all instantaneous and took less than 5 minutes.
Public bus frequency was like once every 5 minutes or even less. The same with metro trains, almost all metro trains came within 2 minutes. Intercity High speed train is on time and in fact arrived before the scheduled time - so make sure you on time and be on the platform 15 minutes ahead of scheduled arrival.
Chengdu also had BRT, which I saw but didn't have a chance to try it.
Long distance coach travel between cities is a popular mode of transport in China. There was a glitch on one of the intercity coach. A coach that is suppose to come after the next bus arrived earlier than the next coach. Intercity coach frequency was like once every 10-15 minutes for routes that are 100-200 miles apart. In comparison, the average frequency for high speed train was once every 1.5 to 2 hours or so and tickets usually run out an hour before so pre-booking is required. For short distances of less than 200 miles, I would travel by coach.
Connectivity between the different modes of transportation was fairly good. One could travel by high speed train from the airport to the train station in the city and transfer to public buses and metro trains. The only negative point is the metro network which is relatively new with only 2 completed lines and doesn't connect to the airport - another 8 lines are under construction/planned - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu...r_construction
Overall, the experience of traveling in Sichuan was good with value for money train and bus tickets, friendly operators, reliable schedules and high connectivity.
Note: Chengdu (City #10 in my Chinese cities report) is a medium sized inland Chinese city with an urban population of 7 million people. Chengdu's per capita GDP is ranked 61th out of the top 100 cities - http://www.chinawhisper.com/top-100-...dp-per-capita/
I'll now relate what I experienced.
I cleared the customs and immigration at Chengdu Airport in less than 10 minutes. The custom officer was fairly friendly and smiled - the experience was better than what I've experienced in Shanghai 10 years ago but Shanghai is a much larger city and the airport was busier. Checking in on the return trip took much longer, I was in the economy class queue for at least 1 hour - I was at the Airport 2.5 hours before but the ticketing counter opened only about 1.5 hours before the flight.
After clearing customs, I called the airport hotel and the hotel shuttle came in 10 minutes. Hotel check-in took 3-5 minutes as was the case with all the hotels (1-3 star hotels/motels) I visited during my trip, check-in and check-out were almost all instantaneous and took less than 5 minutes.
Public bus frequency was like once every 5 minutes or even less. The same with metro trains, almost all metro trains came within 2 minutes. Intercity High speed train is on time and in fact arrived before the scheduled time - so make sure you on time and be on the platform 15 minutes ahead of scheduled arrival.
Chengdu also had BRT, which I saw but didn't have a chance to try it.
Long distance coach travel between cities is a popular mode of transport in China. There was a glitch on one of the intercity coach. A coach that is suppose to come after the next bus arrived earlier than the next coach. Intercity coach frequency was like once every 10-15 minutes for routes that are 100-200 miles apart. In comparison, the average frequency for high speed train was once every 1.5 to 2 hours or so and tickets usually run out an hour before so pre-booking is required. For short distances of less than 200 miles, I would travel by coach.
Connectivity between the different modes of transportation was fairly good. One could travel by high speed train from the airport to the train station in the city and transfer to public buses and metro trains. The only negative point is the metro network which is relatively new with only 2 completed lines and doesn't connect to the airport - another 8 lines are under construction/planned - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu...r_construction
Overall, the experience of traveling in Sichuan was good with value for money train and bus tickets, friendly operators, reliable schedules and high connectivity.
Note: Chengdu (City #10 in my Chinese cities report) is a medium sized inland Chinese city with an urban population of 7 million people. Chengdu's per capita GDP is ranked 61th out of the top 100 cities - http://www.chinawhisper.com/top-100-...dp-per-capita/
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