Three New Stations for Gyeongchun Line [Updated Post]

Update 4 – December 2013: All three stations have now been opened with Sinnae (Shinnae/신내역) Station having finally opened on December 28  2013. Unfortunately work has not even started on building a Line 6 Sinnae Station extended from the current terminus at Bonghwasan due to a disagreement between KORAIL and SMRT over whether the Line 6 station should have one or two tracks. Photos of the new Sinnae Station can be seen here. 

Update 3 – November 2013: Cheonmasan Station will finally open on November 30. View photos from the latest progress on Sinnae Station which is expected to open on December 28.

Update 2 – July: As you can see from these photos which were recently taken of the Cheonmasan Station construction site, the station is still far off opening. Estimates at this stage put the opening date in November.

Update: According to MLTM, Mukhyeon Station has been renamed to Cheonmasan Station and will be opening for service on June 29, followed by Shinnae Station on September 14.

On December 15,  Byeollae Station (별내역), the first of three new stations on the Gyeongchun Line was opened officially. This will be followed by Sinnae Station (신내역) in early 2013 and Cheonmasan Station (formerly Mukhyeon 묵현역) in June 2013. Byeollae and Sinnae stations are located in areas which are currently already under heavy development. Byeollae Station in particular will serve Byeollae “new city“, a massive new development on the the outskirts of Seoul and situated near the start of the Gyeongchun Line.

Sinnae Station is located even closer to Seoul and in the future will also serve as a transfer point for Line 6, where the train depot is already located. This will mean that Line 6 is simply extended one station from the current terminus at Bonghwasan Station. Unfortunately, despite most of the infrastructure to open the extension being already in place, SMRT has said that it may open in approximately 2-3 years. This is likely due to the fact that the neighboring developments are still being built and it won’t be sometime until they are full with residents.

Byeollae also has future plans to be turned into a transfer center which will be connected to buses and eventually the Line 8 extension extending from the current terminus at Amsa Station (암사역). The extension is still in the planning stages and is expected to be completed in 2017. The station has caught some flack for lack of accessibility for the disabled as seen in this article, but as the photos were taken not long after opening, everything may have not been in place yet. Concerns have also been raised about Mukhyeon Station and the lack of parking for users, with only 40 spaces available.