Public Transportation in St. Petersburg

While I am here in St. Petersburg, I am relying solely on public transportation to get around. Luckily the family I’m staying with lives about a 5 minute walk from a metro station, so I don’t have to think too hard about how I’m going to get into the city everyday. But if the metro wasn’t so convenient, I would have several other options to choose from.

I’ll start off with the metro, which is incidentally the only one that I actually have experience with at this point. All of my experiences with the metro have been positive, with the exception of trying to by a 40 ride pass from the lady behind the ticket window. The cars are clean, the trains run on time, the passengers are courteous, and the stations all have a unique character that I want write more about later.

From some of the suburbs that are outside the reach of metro there is an above ground train that has a dedicated right of way.

Above all of major streets in St. Petersburg are cables for powering electric busses and trolley cars. I think that the buses and the trolleys use different sets of wires, which further complicates things, but I can’t be sure. This also explains why so many of the pictures I have taken include several sets of wires spanning directly in front of the subject.

Normal city buses are also around. They have standard stops, which seem to be nothing special.

In addition to the standard buses, the marshrutka are something between the size of a passenger van and a short bus. They follow a documented route, but you have flag them down to get on and make a request at your stop to get off. I think this is somewhat similar to the Community Circulators that have started showing up in Cleveland, but some of the routes cover a much larger area.