Line 9 extension fans overcrowding fears
Commuters cram onto an express train on Line 9 of Seoul Metro at Express Bus Terminal Station. / Korea Times photo by Bae Sung-jae
By Lee Suh-yoon
Im, an office worker who uses Line 9 to get from her home near Gayang Station to central Seoul, says her commute is getting more stressful every year.
“You have to just get one foot in the door and push yourself in somehow,” Im said. “By the time I get off I'm exhausted and leave with severe back pain.”
Her fears were further compounded this week, as Seoul Metro Line 9, cutting horizontally through Seoul, extended its rails to service eight new stations on its eastern end. The extension stretches the waiting time between trains by an extra one-and-a-half minutes for Line 9 commuters during rush hour.
The 9.2 kilometers of extended tracks allow passengers to get from Seoul Olympic Park on the city's southeastern tip to Gimpo International Airport in just 50 minutes on its express train. The number of morning commuters on Line 9 increased by 6.4 percent to around 145,000 on Monday morning due to the influx of new passengers from eastern Seoul.
Line 9 marked in blue / Naver Map
“It's hard to tell the trains are more packed than usual because they were already filled up to their maximum capacity,“ said Jung, another office worker who takes Line 9 between Dangsan and Sinnonhyeon stations. “In fact it's so cramped that some people can't even get off at their stop.”
The overcrowding problem is most serious on the express trains that stop at fewer stations. Squashed up against one another, passengers can barely lift their arms. Small fights break out as passengers push and jostle their way in or out of the train.
To brace for the increased load, eight four-car express trains on Line 9 were upgraded to six-car trains. The city plans to do the same with its other trains and purchase three more trains for the line by the end of 2019.
Commuters line up at the platform of Sports Complex Station on Line 9, Monday. / Yonhap.
Subway platforms on Line 9 are built to service eight-car trains. But the city's transport department said it wants to first increase the frequency ― rather than length and capacity ― of trains to curb the overcrowding problem. The shortest interval time possible between trains allowed on Seoul's metro system is two-and-a-half minutes.
More and more commuters are using Line 9, which connects increasingly populous residential areas such as Gangseo-gu in western Seoul with the business districts of Yeouido and Gangnam. The opening of LG's new mega-size research complex in April near Line 9's Magok Station in Gangseo-gu also drew more people into the area.
Unlike Seoul's subway lines 1 through 8, which are managed directly by the city government and Seoul Metro, Line 9 is jointly operated by Hyundai Rotem and French transport companies RATP Dev and Transdev under Seoul Metro Line 9 Corporation's 30-year contract with the city government. Critics in the past have pointed to the privatization of Line 9 as the root cause of its low-cost overcrowded operations.