Public transportation in Seoul
OK, so we’ve been here for a while and we’re starting to find our stride.
We know what we’re doing, we know how to go about things, we know how to find our way.
Important in finding our way is the Seoul Public Transportation system.
This consists of a number of different parts
- The subway
- The buses
- The trains
- Taxis
Taxis aren’t really something you’d put under the header of public transport, but you will see how it has it’s place when I get to it.
The subway is an extensive network of different lines (10 in total I think) that twist and turn and dig their way through Seoul soil. Looking something like this:
Or, if you will, something like this:
The system is vast and will take you close to pretty much anywhere you want to go. It comes with websites which will tell you how long your trip will take and the quickest/easiest route. Also available in English.
But, as we found out soon enough when we moved into our apartment, just taking the subway isn’t always the fastest way to get around. With the Han (the big river) running through Seoul choices had to be made where lines cross. With the hills and mountains detours had to be chosen.
Enter the bus system. I can’t show you a map with the buslines, as it would simply be stringy confetti. There isn’t a part of Seoul that isn’t serviced by at least one bus. The bus system is complicated, but I’ll give a stab at it.
There are 4 color buses. Blue, Green, Red and Yellow. Then there’s express buses for airport duty and stuff
Blue buses are the major arteries of bus transport. They go from one zone of Seoul to another. The zones of Seoul look like this:
The blue bus numbers consist of 3 numbers. The zone it comes from, the zone it goes to, and the route serial number. For instance, the bus we take in the morning is the 143 or the 401. We get on in 0 (which is one of the start/stop, because of course buses go both ways, zones of the 401. But is also between 1 and 4) and get off in 4. It’s the #1 bus for the 4-0 and the 3rd bus for the 1-4 zone. To give you an indicator of how many buses there are. These are the bus numbers starting in zone 1: 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106,107, 108(1), 108(2), 109, 110A, 110B, 120, 130, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151 ,152, 153, 154, 160, 162, ,163, 171, 172.
Green buses connect subway lines and blue bus routes. They can cross zones, but only ever one. Their numbers operate the same way as the blue buses except that the serial number is a 2 digit number. Because there’s more of them. Want a list of zone 1 green buses? Go here.
Red buses connect the center with the sub-suburbs. That’s the gray bit which still have numbers in them. There’s not so many of them, and with good reason. This is a metropolitan, which in today’s world doesn’t just mean lots of people but most definitely means heavy congestion on the roads. Seriously, take a subway.
Yellow buses. Funny thing, our yellow bus is a green bus. Someone got confused I think. Yellow buses travel within a zone and connect useful points. The number is based on 2 numbers. The zone number and the serial number. Except those called ‘city center circulating bus’ and the like.
The trains. To be honest some of the subways run above ground, which make the difference a bit hard to spot. But the KTX system stops in a couple of major hubs (Seoul station, Yeongsan and Gwangmyeong) and connects them with Busan, Mokpo, Incheon and the like. There’s also some express subway lines which may be worth mentioning*.
Example time.
We live in Itaewon-dong, a dong in Yongsan-gu.
Our office is in Garak Market-dong, a dong in Songpa-gu.
Please keep in mind that Seoul is a a BIG city. That’s about 12 km as the crow flies. The way the subway runs is this:
Birds fly more efficiently than that
Add a bus to it and you have this:
Now, I named this post ‘Public transportation in Seoul’ because it’s mostly an integrated system (Damn you, line 9). That means that while we use 2 different systems we pay one price.
By subway alone, a ride roughly 18 km, 1 hours long, costs us ₩ 1100. This translates to a whopping 72 cents (07-07-2010 conversion rate)
Bus and subway combined, 15 km and 40 minutes long, costs us ₩ 1100. Again, 72 cents
No matter where you live, that’s a deal. Japan comes close, Singapore will too. Nationale Spoorwegen (Dutch National Railways) . . . . no. Not close. Not nearly close. You may spot it on the horizon, but you certainly won’t believe what you see.
It gets better. We live on a hill, you might’ve heard me say it’s 100 meters vertical from the subway/bus station to our house. When we get off the bus, we just wait for our green yellow bus #03 to take us up to the Hyatt hotel, and walk down to our house for no extra charge. That’s 2 transfers, 2 buses and a subway ride. Totaling 45 minutes, for 72 cents.
If you’ve been paying attention, I’ve not mentioned taxis yet.
Taxi culture here is quite different from Western Europe. Somewhere there’s a flip over point where you go from ‘very few, but expensive cab rides’, like the Netherlands, to ‘lots of readily available cheap cabrides’ and have it make economical sense. Korea isn’t the only country which has this. As Raph is quick to point out, other countries in S.E. Asia are cheaper still, but that’s probably because everything is cheaper in those countries.
When we moved from our office to our apartment I got a taxi. During rush hour, with extra costs for delay time and everything leading up to over an hour travel time, I rode a taxi across all of Seoul, for ₩ 14000. That’s €9.13. It used to costs me 6-7 euros to get a taxi from Delft station to my house. And while that is also all the way across a city, it really means 2.5 km and 5-10 minutes. During the night (High rate), coming back from Hongdae, some 11 km away as the crow flies, costs us ₩ 7000 (€4.50).
Can’t say much good about the national food identity yet, I still prefer a kroket to kimchi, but the public transportation in Seoul certainly beats what I was used to in the Netherlands.
* but I’m not going to
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I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be
- Douglas Adams
Deze post is ook te lezen in: Dutch