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The prognosis for Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving, the biggest holiday of the year between Sept. 21 and 27, is that traffic jams will be heaviest on Monday 24 and Wednesday 26. The Ministry of Construction and Transportation on Thursday said traffic ˇ®will be heavier when people come back to Seoul than when they move to their home provinces.ˇ± Koreans are expected to make some 46.24 million trips to and from their home provinces during Chuseok, up by 3.5 percent from last year. Passenger cars are expected to be the most popular form of transport, accounting for 84.4 percent, followed by coaches with 10.7 percent, trains with 2.8 percent, express buses with 1.2 percent, flights with 0.4 percent and ships with 0.5 percent.
Some 23.84 million cars are expected to use the highways; that translates into 3.41 million cars a day. A trip to the home provinces from Seoul is expected to take on average four hours and 20 minutes to Daejeon, eight to Busan and seven to Gwangju. The return journey to Seoul is expected to take six hours from Daejeon, nine from Busan and eight hours and 20 minutes from Gwangju. ˇ°If more than six people use a van with nine or more seats, they can take the exclusive bus lane, reducing the time by one or two hours compared to going by passenger car,ˇ± a ministry official said. The government will extend operating hours of main subway lines and buses until 2 a.m. on Sept. 26 and 27 for people who arrive back in Seoul in the early morning.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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