By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff Reporter
Seoul subways will have more reserved seats from March.
Seoul Metro, which runs subway lines 1-4, said Monday it will designate seven more seats for pregnant women, mothers with children and the disabled in each passenger car of subway lines 2-4 from March 1 next to current seats for the aged, with pictograms symbolizing the pregnant, the disabled and mothers with children. Lower hand straps will also be installed. Currently, each train has 12 seats reserved for the elderly out of 54 seats in each subway car.
The seats will be different from current reserved ones for the elderly. ``Instead of leaving the reserved seats for the elderly vacant all the time, other passengers may use the seats but must surrender them to those in need,'' a Seoul Metro official said.
Seoul Metro has been test-operating the special seats in trains on subway line No. 1 since December 2007. According to its survey, 63 percent of 4,286 participants supported the test-operation of the seats and 94 percent of supporters were in favor of expanding the designated seats to other subway lines.
However, the expansion might draw objections from younger passengers. Seoul Metro emphasizes it is not expanding seating for the aged.
``We designated the special seats because it's not easy for the disabled or the pregnant to occupy the seats for the elderly,'' Kim Myung-ran of Seoul Metro said. ``These seats are the seats of concession and care for those who need them.''
The subway operator will promote the new seating arrangement through its Web site, posters and train announcements.