Upcoming projects around Seoul and the rest of Korea
May 3, 2013 5 Comments
Since April 19 there are buses operating through the whole night on two routes in Seoul. The transport division of Seoul City Government published some statistics about the usage of the night bus. This survey is very important because it helps the city government to decide if operation should continue and expand or not. Read more of this post
April 29, 2013 2 Comments
We talked about the history of streetcars in Seoul and that Korea is developing a new type of public transport method, which merges the advantages of streetcars and buses. The dependence on fossil fuels has to be reduced. The solution are electrically powered vehicles. Electric vehicles could get energy through external connections (like overhead wire) or they have to carry a battery with a high capacity. Even though overhead wires are still very common in Europe, Korea seems to prefer batteries. That makes the development very challenging and creative solutions have to be found. In Korea, a company seemed to found such a solution, which involves changing batteries instead of recharging them directly inside of the vehicle.
April 17, 2013 5 Comments
One of the youngest subway lines in Seoul’s metropolitan region has some problems, which could become a serious safety issue. Certain parts of the subway rail tracks on the Sinbundang Line broke in around 400 cases until now. Read more of this post
April 15, 2013 4 Comments
The fate of Incheon’s monorail, Wolmi Eunha Rail, lies in the hands of the Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI) after a disastrous history since the line’s initial “completion” in 2009. According to this article from DongA News and several others, the KRRI will be investigating the safety of the line to decide whether it can be fixed and used, or whether the line will be altered and used a different way. Read more of this post
April 11, 2013 6 Comments
Image: Flickr – bikesandwich
One question that is often asked by many while living in Seoul is why there is no public transport in the earliest hours of the morning. This will soon change when two new night bus services begin operating across Seoul from April 19 with more to come later in the year. Read more of this post
March 31, 2013 8 Comments
The last six days I was in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, for a city-trip. Beforehand I heard a lot of good things about public transport of Taipei and so I was very excited to use subway, bus and other modes of transport. This post is going to summarize my experience and from time to time I’ll compare it with Seoul. The following picture shows the most important historical figures for Taiwan Chiang Kai-shek and China Sun Yat-sen sitting in a train.
March 21, 2013 2 Comments
If you ride the subway in Seoul, you’ll notice that it’s most of the times very quiet. It’s rather seldom that you hear somebody talk or noisy bigger groups of people. Most subway riders look at their smartphone spending their time productive, playing games or relaxing to music and videos. Although it’s so quiet and a good environment to concentrate, you won’t see a lot of people with a book. However, in the last months there’s a small renaissance of reading in general and especially in public transport. Through this post, I want to show how Korea jumps on the train of reading books in subways. Read more of this post
March 20, 2013 2 Comments
There aren’t any trams in Seoul since fifty years, but it doesn’t mean that Korea completely abandoned the idea of trams. Actually, Korea currently works on the development of new tram systems. In 2012 the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs decided to focus on one special kind of tram (via KBS):
The government has designated bimodal trams and magnet-embedded tracks as new transportation technologies.
Bimodal trams are built by applying railway technologies into buses. Bimodal trams are a new type of transportation that boasts the flexibility of buses and periodicity of trains. The trams are controlled electronically, provide a smoother ride for passengers, and can be automatically operated on dedicated tracks with magnets embedded in them.
The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs explained that such technologies are eco-friendly systems that could be used to replace light rail vehicles.
It’s great that South Koreal pursues development into this particular direction. There are some points which I would like to discuss: Bimodal trams, magnet-embedded tracks, replacement of light rail. We’ll start with the last one point. Read more of this post
February 27, 2013 6 Comments
Korail has announced the name of the new Saemaul trains which will begin running in the first half of 2014. After holding a naming competition where 1941 entries were collected, the train has been renamed the “ITX-Saemaul”.
Image: Korail
