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Getting around in St Petersburg

Getting around in St Petersburg

Getting from the airport
St Petersburg has two airports, both south of the city: Pulkovo-1 and Pulkovo-2. International flights land at Pulkovo-2. Arranging a taxi through your hotel is the easiest and least stressful way of getting into the city.

There are plenty of taxis outside the terminal building, but be aware that fares can be ‘fluid’. Agree the cost before you get into the taxi. A fair price would be 750Rbl (£16, €20) so test your negotiating skills.

Pulkovo Airport Express coaches operate 24 hours a day, every 20 - 30 minutes, less frequently at night. They travel to Metro station Pushkinskaya in about 40 minutes, but heavy traffic can lengthen the journey time. Tickets costs 70Rbl single, 130Rbl return. From there you can use the Metro system (tickets cost 17Rbl) or pick up a taxi at a more sensible price than from the airport (about 200Rbl into the city centre).

If you want a truly local experience, brave a bus or fixed route mini-bus (marshrutka) to Metro station Moskovskaya. They run every 15 minutes and the fare will be around 20Rbl. Mini-buses K3 and K213 go to Moskovskaya and the more central Sennaya Plochad.

Pulkova-2
Tel: +7 812 704 3444

Airport Express
Tel: +7 812 388 0055

Getting around St Petersburg
Whatever type of public transport you take – bus, Metro, trolleybus, tram or the ubiquitous mini-bus marshrutkas – expect it to be crowded and cheap. The Metro and marshrutkas are the most efficient. You’ll feel much more confident if you can decipher the Cyrillic alphabet.

Metro: With only four colour-coded lines, the Metro system, which is the world’s deepest, is quite easy to fathom. The bad news is that it is mainly used to get the city’s five million population from and to locations out of the city centre, so there’s a limited number of useful stations for tourists, the main ones being along Nevsky Prospekt.

You buy tokens (zhetoni) from the kassa for 17Rbl (about 40p) for a single journey or plastic cards for 10, 20 or more journeys that can be used for a fixed period, eg 7 days. Crackly announcements are made to indicate the arrival station, followed by the name of the next stop, but can be difficult to understand. Work out your journey before you descend into the deep and count the station stops to your destination as you go along.

The Metro operates between about 6 am and midnight-30 and you seldom wait more than a couple of minutes for a train.



Marshrutkas (mini-bus): Marshrutkas cover the city centre and suburbs and follow a set route. They have set departure points but can be hailed like taxis anywhere along that route. If they can cram in another person, they’ll stop. The numbers and routes are shown in a window, written in Cyrillic.

To pay (fares range from 16Rbl to 30Rbl depending on the route) hand over money to the driver or, more usually, you pass the fare to the person in front and it travels up to the driver. When you want to get off, shout ‘ostanavites pazhalusta’ loudly.

You buy tickets from the driver or conductor on buses, trams and trolleybuses (16Rbl). Above-ground transport operates between around 6am and midnight.

Taxi: If you need a taxi it is safer to ask a hotel or restaurant to call one for you. If you flag one down in the street you should negotiate the fare (very few drivers speak English).

© TheTravelEditor.com

Reproduced with the kind permission of TheTravelEditor.com

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