Nobody really likes it, but everybody sort of must use it every now and then. What am I talking about? The public transportation of course! Given how it is a crucial part of our lives I could not help but write a piece about public transportation in Nizhny Novgorod. Let us go ahead and explore this “fascinating” subject in detail and be done with it!
Trolleybuses, Buses, and Minibuses
Main method of traversing the city for most of its denizens is its rather extensive bus network. Good news is, there are plenty of them, the bad news is they are unpredictable. Sometimes there are up to five different buses/minibuses etc. you can use to get from point A to point B, yet you wait 15 minutes in the bus stop only to see that all five vehicles come back-to-back for some bizarre reason. The whole network is quite crowded, and I did fail to get aboard a bus or two that I waited for quite a lot of time just because they were already full. Though they do get the job done, it is never really an easy or practical option. I try to use them only to reach far away parts of the city for more leisurely and time-insensitive activities. Naturally, things get only worse around winter when traffic becomes even a crazier problem so do keep that in mind as well. Paying for your ride for the uninitiated is also a bit problematic. Some buses and trolleybuses have terminals where you can use cards for payment, which is very convenient. When those terminals do not work for a reason, you just go to the driver and pay your dare, though this is easier said than done in an extremely busy rush hour… Same rule applies to most minibuses, where you need to get your card or cash to the driver and get a ticket in return. You will see many people asking you to pass their money or card to the driver, and then you must give their tickets and cards back to them. Similarly, you may have to trust this system with your own cash and card as well, hoping that nothing will happen to them on their way to the driver and back. It is far from ideal, so keep all of that in mind.
Trams
There are quite a few lines that trams run on, though almost all seem to be centred around the old city, the peninsula that sits on the Eastern bank of Oka. Unfortunately they too are quite unreliable. I had instances where I had to wait up to 30 minutes for one to come in the direction I wanted to go, despite there being many trams going on the opposite direction. Given the fact that this was a circular course, it makes one wonder why these trams do not eventually come back to pick us up… Payment terminals are present here too, and thus one can pay by card at a few spots around any carriage. Their routes are limited but trams are there to be a plan B if things ever go south with walking everywhere when living close to the centre.
Metro
Soviet/Russian metro is quite efficient all-around so one is tempted to say that it is the best method of transportation this city has to offer. However, there is only really one proper main line that goes from the city centre to the southwestern bank of Oka, and there is one more much shorter line that jots out of the main one and serves a few other not terribly touristic parts of the city. This means that though it works fine and is a pretty good option overall, its uses are limited at best unless you live in a “far away” part of the city and use it to commute to the centre every day. None of this is to bad mouth the system per se, on the contrary, it seems to be having an expansion nowadays so if that goes ahead as planned it will function as the main artery of the city’s public transportation for sure. Just do not expect to take the metro to any important destination you have on your itinerary as you could do in some other bigger cities.
Useful Apps
As is the case with many ex-Soviet countries, Yandex and its assortment of apps works the best when you are trying to find any information about the Russian Federation, that includes moving around its many cities. Therefore, Yandex Maps should be your go to app to figure out how to go from one point to the other. There is also the Bustime app, which quite accurately show you where your bus is in real time, and seems to offer much better estimations for when your bus will be at the bus stop than any other alternatives.
Just walk…
All this being said, if you are visiting Nizhny as a tourist or a student, the best thing you can do for yourself is to simply rent an apartment that is near the city centre to avoid pretty much all the twists and turns of the public transport. I live quite far away from the city centre for many people (30 minutes by walking) and yet I did not use any buses etc. other than to reach a faraway museum or park ever since I moved to my own place. This way you can get your exercise done for the day all the while seeing the prettier parts of the city routinely. Moreover, public transportation pretty much ceases to exist at night and by living somewhere relatively central you can cut down on those taxi costs significantly too, or simply have a late night walk back home! I know that this is likely not an option for everyone, given health and age circumstances, but if you have no such restrictions and if paying a little extra for a more central place to stay in is within your budget, you should put those legs to good use!