I don’t drive in Seoul so I don’t have to face any traffic jams and such. The subway system in Seoul is fantastic, easy to use, and is very cheap compared to Tokyo and even New York and Boston. The network is in my opinion far superior to New York and Boston. One of the things I find most annoying about New York is its annoying design which effectively segregates the East side of Manhattan from the West side and has such inconvenient connections that almost everyone has to go through Times Square to get anywhere interesting.
Though the nasty smelling and polluted streets of Seoul will fill your nostrils alternatively with the scent of sewage, tobacco, and car exhaust, Seoul subways are also far cleaner than New York’s smelly and dirty subways, where conductors occasionally yell at passengers, make bizarrely grumpy announcements, and the summer months are plagued by cars whose air conditioning is broken. The one thing that we can all appreciate about the New York subway is the fact that they very conveniently run 24 hours.
Since I have only been in Korea for a week so I shouldn’t be too confident about my observations but two things I have noticed so far about traffic rules: First, as if the pollution isn’t bad enough, scooters and motorcycles often drive on the pavement. This is perhaps partly because many of the streets make it difficult for them to cross over to the direction they want to drive. They billow out foul smelling exhaust from their tailpipes and I’m not the only one to cough and hack as they drive past. The scooter exhaust mixes with the smoke that flows out from street venders selling various kinds of orange colored food. In Taipei I remember them sticking on the road mostly, often in the hundreds as they collect at intersections. Some of the streets in central Taipei even have “no scooter” streets (such as the one near the central train station).
Secondly, red lights seem to be optional in Seoul when they are by crosswalks. On many occasion I have been happily crossing the street at a crosswalk with a green man showing (and a red light for cars) and the cars will drive by me (albeit somewhat more slowly) both in front and behind. I know they must be annoyed at waiting for pedestrians, but this can’t be a very safe practice. I like to be able to cross crosswalks when the man is green without having to be too paranoid about being run over.
It’s funny you should mention the ‘nasty smelling’ streets of Seoul because for some reason I feel a certain amount of nostalgia for them. That soft, sewagey smell is very rare here in London, but if I ever do catch an occasional whiff of it I get nasally transported back to Seoul.
Incidentally, I was told by my old boss at the Korea Foundation that Seoul’s pollution and stink used to be considerably worse up until the 70/80s because everyone burned charcoal briquettes (as they still do in Beijing) so there was that sulphurous pall hanging over the whole city.
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