With the construction of the Ho-nam high speed rail in 2014, traveling between Gwangju and Seoul is to take an hour and 11 minutes.
This is because the next generation train being developed in 2012 can run as fast as 430 kilometers an hour and the rail system will also adopt up-to-date technology.
This is 20 minutes faster than the current high speed train and an hour and 41 minutes less than the current time duration.
On this topic the Chosun Ilbo wrote on the 2nd that "Korea Can Soon Be Crossed in 90 Minutes," and the JoongAng Ilbo wrote
High-speed rail networks will be expanded to connect major cities, and travel time within 95 percent of Korea will be reduced to two hours or less by 2020, the government announced yesterday.
8 comments:
I guess the faster trains makes up for Kwangju having gotten the full KTX track later than Taegu.
North-South travel is easy. West-East is terribly lacking. Even from Daejeon, a centrally-located train and bus "hub", it is beyond inconvenient to travel to the east coast.
I'll be happy when they finally improve the west-east lines.
I agree with you Darth. It's also difficult in terms of time, to travel east-west from the southern coast (i.e. from Gwangju to Busan). It's obvious why the links to Seoul take priority but it's good to see they will be constructing others.
I hope they've been working on developing the next generation train for at least a decade now. Anything that goes that fast is not something you just kitbash and if they are anything like the first hyundae cars that came out...well enough said. Interesting how they want to get into the high speed rail market. I suppose it could be done but it'll take a lot of time and more money than they think to do so.
As I said, Daejeon is somewhat of a train and bus hub, but I find it ridiculous that I can't get to (for example) Wonju without first going up to Seoul THEN over to Wonju. Whether by bus or train, it's the same; an otherwise 90-minute trip instead takes 4 hours.
The time to beef up the west-east lines is LONG overdue.
Darth, aren't there plans to make high-speed rail from Seoul to Kangnŭng?
Other than that, there aren't a whole heck of a lot of demographically viable east-west routes. That is, if you don't count the eastward part of the Seoul-to-Taegu/Pusan vector.
AFAIK, there are plans in the works, but I would be happy with anything, even buses, that didn't require going through Seoul first.
As you say, there aren't many east-west routes that are viable, but even taking the major cities (Seoul, Daejeon, Daegu, Busan) and linking them with some common destinations in the east (Sorrak-san, Gangneung, Wonju/Chuncheon, Ulsan, etc) would be a welcome start. Going 2 hours out of the way in a direction perpendicular to where I'm going before even STARTING towards my destination is ridiculous.
I'm not sure what's happened to the bus routes in the last 12 months, but from 2002-2009 I routinely took buses along the Daejeon-Cheongju-Chungju-Wonju route. Sometimes it meant changing in Chungju, but that's one of the country's best terminals, and it rarely took more than 30 mins.
I'm a huge KTX fan. Kicks Shinkansen ass.
re: 30 mins
I mean the bus changeover in 충주.
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