Unionized workers of Seoul Metro demands review of plan, city government says transportation needs in early mornings greatly exceed those late at night
The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to shift subway operations 30 minutes earlier, starting this August.
However, a subway workers' union voiced strong opposition on Thursday, citing insufficient analysis to justify the change.
Under a plan announced Wednesday, Seoul subway Lines No. 1 through No. 8 will commence operation at 5 a.m. instead of the current 5:30 a.m. from August, and the final trains of the day will also run correspondingly earlier.
The revised schedule will initially apply only to subway sections within Seoul. But city officials said it would push for the new hours to other sections in the greater Seoul region, with plans to hold discussions with other metro system operators, the Korea Railroad Corp. and Airport Railroad Co.
But on Thursday, members of the third-largest labor union within Seoul Metro — the main operator of the city's subway systems — demanded that Mayor Oh Se-hoon conduct a full review of the plan. They argued the decision was made without a specific analysis of transport demand during early hours.
"(Seoul city) only mentioned the emotional issues like looking out for workers commuting in the early hours, and has not sufficiently analyzed the demand for transportation that requires (subway) operation to be pushed forward by 30 minutes," the union said in an official statement. "Changing the operation hours without analyzing the demand is a waste of manpower and energy, and only deteriorates the financial status of the Seoul Metro.
Seoul denied this, claiming that around 23,000 more people are expected to use the subway if the trains run between 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m.
This is based on data showing that 32,520 people ride on buses between 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., and 71 percent of all public transportation users between 5:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. use the subway. This, the officials deduced, suggests that a similar percentage of early-morning bus riders could switch for the subway if given the option.
Officials also pointed out that only 7,000 people use the subway between 12:30 a.m. and 1 a.m., arguing that substantially more people could benefit from earlier subway operating hours than the later hours.
In response to expected transportation shortage in the later hours, Seoul said it would expand the number of self-driving buses during overnight hours.
Seoul's early-morning autonomous driving bus route, A160, launched in November, and has been used by some 10,000 passengers in the six months of its operation. Officials said they will add three new routes of self-driving bus routes within this year, ultimately expanding to 10 routes.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
