To play the devil's advocate: Shenzhen opened a metro/subway not before 2004 (being only the 8th city in China with a subway). And looking at the system map, it

To play the devil's advocate: Shenzhen opened a metro/subway not before 2004 (being only the 8th city in China with a subway). And looking at the system map, it has as much stops as an average 500k inhabitants city in Germany. That's embarrassing for a city with a population of 12M. Building subways is orders of magnitudes more expensive than running bus lines, even if they are electric. But it's an old standing answer to still thrilling problems of urban traffic...