Buses? Anyone got a 21st century solution? It looks like its about 50 miles from SF to San Jose. Maybe someday they'll build a train that can turn that into a 15 minute commute.
20 or 30 minutes on the subway actually to get to Puxi (basically, downtown Shanghai). China's middle class is very cab oriented; it doesn't make much sense to take public transit, especially for 40 or so RMB the maglev costs, when you can hop into a cab and get where you want much sooner (barring horrible traffic).
In Beijing, I taxi to work everyday despite living on the subway route to my office. Taking a taxi is not that expensive while its more comfortable and (not always) faster. This has no relationship to the American situation, I guess, which is tripled screwed by low densities, poorly developed public transit, and high taxi costs.
In Tokyo, it's often faster, and always more reliable, to take a train than a taxi unless you're going someplace way out in the boonies, because although the travel time is roughly equivalent in the best case, a taxi is frequently much slower due to traffic. Thank god for cellphones so one can at least known why one's taxi-using friend is 45min late...!
Tokyo subway is much better than Beijing's; here you will never get a seat no matter when you travel (not just rush hour), the transfers are wicked long, the system is also not very connected. It is very cheap though, only 2 RMB (~30 cents?), which explains why it is so crowded. With a taxi, I really have to make sure not to travel when traffic is bad, and it is much more expensive (50 RMB), but I can use my computer in the cab.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train
Unfortunately, once you reach your destination, you'll spend another 20 minutes on a bus.