Traffic

The traffic here has a different system of logic and it's not a uniform one. In Ansan, for example, traffic behaves very different that how it behaves in Seoul.

Two weekends ago a co-worker and I biked to Seoul. The trip itself went much quicker than expected, about an hour and a half in total. The sites along the ride were beautiful. The colours on the leaves are in the midst of changing, so the normally green surfaces of the innumerable mountains are now covered in an orange and yellow blanket. The road we took wasn't too busy highway, like the highway we had taken to Icheon three weeks prior. Instead, it was a quiet two lane affair that cut a straight path from Ansan to Seoul. It went over and through low mountains, small dusty towns, and quaint farming valleys. All the while cars would calmly pass us, save for the occasional bus or truck which would force us to hug the shoulder. It was overall a very docile and uneventful ride.

Then, we found our way into Geumjong-gu in Seoul. The 'Gu's' are essentially city districts, Geumjong being about 10km from our final destination, Seocho-gu. Anyways, we came into Geumjong-gu from a road that emptied out of a small farming area with small and poorly built houses. The road itself ended with an 8 lane intersection with a confusing system of traffic lights. As we slowly inched forward on our bikes, cars kept pressing towards us, as if to goad us into moving forward even more. Taking the pressure from the cars as a kind of friendly advice, we disobeyed the traffic signals and made a right turn as soon as an opening presented itself.

Once in a more urban area the change in traffic behaviour was much more obvious. In Ansan, cars and pedestrians will often give way to others. It's not uncommon to watch cars stop and allow pedestrians to cross the road and vice versa. Well...in Seoul, it's essentially a giant game of chicken. When I first came here, I though it would have been insane, if not suicidal, to bike along its streets. It looked like there was no definite order to things...it was simply a chaotic mess waiting to quickly consume the unwary.

Well...having ridden along country highways at night alongside speeding dump trucks...Seoul didn't seem so bad when I finally biked into the city. As the traffic quickly increased in density and volume, we seamlessly fell right into the same pace as the other drivers on the roads. Cutting in and out of cars stalled in traffic, biking quickly along the shoulder behind delivery bikes, and playing cautious games of chicken with aggressive drivers at intersections, I never felt uneasy or afraid. The beast that I had first witnessed now seemed to be a symphony, cacophonous but logical. There were times where we were exiled to the sidewalk, but these instances served as another exercise in precision biking. Refusing to step down off of our seats we slowly wound our way through the throngs of people. Occasional rings of the bell and a lot patience made the entire experience feel like a living slalom.

This past weekend we replicated the same experience in the downtown area of Wonju. The traffic wasn't as aggressive but at times just as dense. Searching for the bus station we wound through the lines of traffic, at one point passing a delivery bike driver who had stopped with the traffic. He likely doubted the size of a gap between cars but I felt it was large enough to fit through. After I had passed him I heard the familiar sound of the throttle being increased on a scooter. Shortly thereafter I was cut off and passed by the same driver. I laughed and felt more like part of a team than an adversary.

This whole entry has been a bit of a tangent...but I'm still getting used to biking in this country. It's one of the few things I thought I would never do here, specifically biking on the roads in urban areas. But like many of the stranger things here, it possesses a bizarre logic. Though I may not agree with it, I basically have no choice but to adapt. I just need to invest in a competent respirator...my head scarf isn't a good enough filter for the dust and exhaust on Korea's crowded highways and roadways.