Seoul is one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of a bit over 10 million in the city proper. The whole metropolitan area has a population of well over 20 million, which is pretty impressive, considering that the country has a total population of a bit under 50 million, i.e., almost half of the population lives in or near Seoul. The area of Seoul is about 600 km2. To put it in perspective, for at least the Finnish readers, the combined area of Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa is about 700 km2 for the land areas, but with a population of only about 1 million. This means that during mid-day, the subway is almost as crowded as trains and subway in Helsinki during rush hour. Rush hour here is something different. 🙂
So, with that background, no wonder that public transport here is cheap, extensive, and frequent. Mainly it consists of the subway and buses, although some of what appears to be the subway is actually a train, but then again, subways are trains as well, so going into further details there is like splitting hairs. I haven’t seen trams (and as far as I know, they don’t have them here), but taxis are a real option for moving around.
Although the subway network is extensive, it obviously doesn’t cover every place, such as SNU campus. The closest subway station to our home is Nakseongdae, about 20 minutes on foot from here. The good news is that there is a bus that leaves from the subway station, drives towards campus right outside our building, makes a partial tour of the campus, and then drives back to the subway station. The better news is that the interval during most of the day is less than 5 minutes, meaning you never need to hurry to catch a bus. Comparing that to back home where the bus intervals are at minimum 20 minutes and often 30 minutes. Feel free to ask “why did you choose to live in the boonies”; I’ll happily ignore you. 🙂
Price-wise the whole thing is a steal. Basic subway fare is 1150 KRW, in practice 1050 KRW since using a travel card (T-money card) gives a discount of 100 KRW. The fare does increase a little bit if you travel further, but even the 30 km trip to Ilsan last weekend was only 1550 KRW or so. Taxis, as I already wrote, are extremely cheap (compared to Finland) and plentiful, as in you can catch one on most streets within a few minutes. Then again, that’s how it works in big cities. Price-wise, I can drive half way across Seoul for the same price it takes me to get in a taxi and close the door in Finland (i.e., the starting fee).
But the best part of the whole system is the T-money card. You can also use it for paying in taxis, convenience stores, and some other places. Doesn’t this mean you need to charge a lot of money on the card and then worry about losing it, I hear you ask. Yes, if you use the version of the card where you charge money, then you are absolutely right. However, the most amazingly niftiest thing I’ve ever seen is that credit cards also contain an RFID chip for the travel card and you just show your credit card (or your wallet containing said credit card) to the reader. It automatically adds the fare to your bill and the system is smart enough not to bill every trip separately but instead collects all the trips in one month on your monthly bill. This is simply wonderful and so super-convenient for the user. Why, why, why can we not have this thing in Helsinki? Why do we have that “archaic” system of needing to go to some specific place to charge your card? I’ve thought about this a bit and I think you could easily implement this kind of a convenient system in Helsinki as well, even when you factor in the myriad fare rules and options for charging your card. (In case you start complaining about some weird corner case where the Korean system would not work, tough luck.)