Seoul

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Mooglemuffins
Nicollet Mall
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Joined: April 26th, 2017, 7:36 am
Location: Longfellow

Seoul

Postby Mooglemuffins » April 26th, 2017, 6:40 pm

Anyone else on here ever had the chance to live over in South Korea and experience their fantastic transit? I lived over in Seoul and a couple other areas around the country for several years and absolutely loved all aspects of it. The transit in particularly though was so refreshing after living in the states where we seem to lack it, and don't see a lot of progress for large interstate transit systems like trains and whatnot.

I could get everywhere in the country for pretty cheap, whether that be by the extensive and excellent subway system in the Seoul metro area http://www.korea4expats.com/korean-subways.php, or hopping on a bus at a transit hub that could take me to every little countryside village. How I'd love to see a light rail transit system in the twin cities even a quarter as networked as theirs.

eazydp
Metrodome
Posts: 66
Joined: June 19th, 2012, 5:12 pm

Re: Seoul

Postby eazydp » April 29th, 2017, 1:19 am

I also lived in South Korea about a decade ago. It was in a small town on the southern coast with about 300k residents, Yeosu. It had a halfway decent transit system, but the area was quite sprawling. It was 1,000 won (~$1) per trip with no transfers. You could indeed get access to nearly the entire area, rural or urban, which was great. However, the service was not frequent and you ended up needing to call a taxi sometimes. I ended up buying a cheap car because my commute was quite long and I car pooled. When I did visit Seoul I loved the subway network though. Reading Korean helped find the proper stops :-D.

The intercity bus and rail was excellent. At the time, we didn't have high speed rail connection, but it's there now. I think for 10 bucks you could catch a 5-6 hour train ride to Seoul or a bus to Busan.

Seoul has about 25M residents and incredible density, so I'm not sure it's a role model city. I would look to Busan, it a similar population and is a bit spread out to a few other cities near by. They have 4 subway lines and a decent bus network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busan_Metro


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