glennaa11

Just saw this article that says the airport express rail will be shutting down due to lack of ridership. I am not clear if that means the non-express train is also going to stop.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Sout...igh-speed-rail

monahos

The money-losing services to be discontinued are the high speed KTX trains running directly from ICN to provincial towns, not the normal airport trains bound for Seoul. To my knowledge those KTX services never stopped in Seoul proper.
KTX trains are the equivalent of Japanese Shinkansen, while the equivalent airport trains would be the Narita Express and JR Yokosuka line; those KTX trains just happen to be running on the same tracks as the ICN airport trains.

That said, I would take Japanese articles about Korea with a pinch of salt, and v.v. Some assertions in this Nikkei article reflect poorly on the writer, such as claiming high speed busses in the outskirts of Seoul outrun KTX trains limited to 170km/h , or that Busan residents flying out of ICN prefer to switch to said busses to save KRW2,400 and 14 minutes, which obviously doesn't include connecting time.

glennaa11

thanks. That makes much more sense

Aventine

The KTX service stopped several months ago. They must mean the Airport Express nonstop train. It is pretty empty on most days but they're just going to put more burden on the all-stop train and make it even more crowded than it is now.

monahos

The article clearly references the KTX (including its 2014 start of service), not AREX, whose last milestone was the 2010 extension to Seoul station.
KTX services to ICN were 'suspended' in March, and are being permanently discontinued next month following government approval.

I doubt Korea would accept the loss of face and downgrade in service level coming from only running all-stop trains to ICN; surely stooping down to a CDG-level service cannot be the target for a country with pride in its infrastructure!

On that topic, I am a strong believer in separation of airport and commuter flows, and cannot think of examples where both harmoniously share the same service in peak periods, with countless instances of the opposite.