Today started unexpectedly with a scavenger hunt, the target being the elusive Dr. Yun. After some bus and subway travel, we tracked him down to the National Museum of Korea, an architecturally striking complex with expansive open spaces and free galleries. We ate lunch there and walked around for a while before heading to a K-pop dance class, which subverted my expectations by being a lot more fun than I had thought. The evening saw us walk through the department store tower Daiso and revisit the Myeong-Dong night market. Overall, a successful day.
Now onto what I’m going to ramble about today, unfortunately a lot more briefly than yesterday.
I touched on it briefly yesterday while writing about people-moving and car-centrism: public transit. It was a smooth experience for both. Standard public transit rules apply: scan in and out and make line changes at no extra cost. Looking at the system through the lens of Smart Systems (as is the program’s theme), I didn’t get a sense that the subway system has any particularly innovative systems. Certainly not over other big-city metro systems such as in NYC, Mumbai, or Paris. I also may have been oblivious to some since I cannot read Korean.
The buses were surprising in that passengers must tap their card getting on and off the bus. Back home in Pittsburgh, and in many other North American cities, buses are flat-fare, while here, a flat fare applies for the first 10km, at which point every 5km traveled is an extra 100 Won. A quick internet search finds that this kind of pricing is common in East Asian cities (Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Chinese Mainland). In many European cities, however, pricing is based on “zones” of the city.
Why the hybrid fare system became the fare system of choice in Korea is an interesting question that I haven’t yet figured out. One thing I’ve found though, is that many of the city buses are not operated by the city at all, but by private companies. It seems like although the city sets the prices and monitors safety, the firms handle day-to-day operations. Very capitalist (non-derogatory). My first theory, based on this, is that unlike governments, which don’t have to be profitable, regulated utilities ideally would be at least breaking even. However, it is in the government’s best interests to keep prices low so that public transit can be accessible to all citizens. Therefore, a pricing model where most citizens can travel cheaply to most nearby, everyday locations makes sense.
All of this is to say that I’m very interested to visit TOPIS later in our trip. Public transit is a massive and complex problem to solve, especially in a city as large as Seoul, and I am excited to see what solutions exist.