Seoul to completely readjust bus routes for the first time in 20 years

[Anchor]
The Seoul Metropolitan Government will overhaul its city bus routes for the first time since 2004.

As the subway has been newly built and large-scale housing development has continued over the past 20 years, they said they will change routes to meet transportation demand and improve bus flow.

Reporter Kim Hyun-ah reports.

[Reporter]
Gwanghwamun bus stop in Seoul.

Bus number 150 passing through here runs from Dobongsan Station to Siheung Bridge in Geumcheon-gu every morning.

The driving distance is 75km. Once you're behind the wheel, you'll be stuck for nearly five hours.

[Seo Seongho / Bus driver #150] Since it takes a long time, I can't concentrate.... It once took about 6 hours and 30 minutes. (On what day did you do that?) On the day of the Armed Forces Day, and when it snows a lot or the weather is bad, such cases and meetings are held a lot....]

Buses in Seoul vary in congestion by route.

There are more than 100 routes passing through Jung-gu and Jongno-gu, which are downtowns, with about 56 people sharing per bus, but Gangdong-gu has only 21 entry routes and more than 1,200 people sharing per bus despite a large-scale redevelopment.

It is also considered a problem that the route has to change lanes frequently due to winding routes, or that the bus speed has decreased by nearly 20% due to the congestion of bus-only lanes as the number of wide-area buses entering the city continues to increase.

[Park Heung-sik / Head of Seoul Bus Policy Division: Individual route adjustments in response to conflicts of stakeholders and changes in residential traffic conditions have reached their limits. In order to solve these problems, we have pushed for a complete reorganization of the bus route system.

Earlier, the Seoul Metropolitan Government moved Myeong-dong and Gangnam stops, where the "war on the way home" took place due to the tangled intersection of wide-area buses, and changed the bus rounding points,

The bus speed on the way home from work has increased by up to 22% in Myeong-dong and up to 31% in Gangnam.The city of

, however, plans to implement an improvement plan in January 2026, considering the transfer point and time as much as possible, as the adjustment of the bus route may cause inconvenience to existing route users.

I'm Kim Hyunah of YTN.