Thursday, July 22, 2010

Eads Bridge / Seoul Subway Bridges

While biking along the Han River in Seoul today, I noticed that the Dongjak bridge happened to be light blue.  It's the same color as the train line that uses it.  Somehow I never noticed that before.  There are many bridges, and most do not carry trains.  All of them have their own color schemes and fancy light shows at night.  What I never realized depsite biking under and across them for quite a while, is that the subway bridges are color-coded.

Check it out. 

This is line 1.


I see some green and light gray (it was red earlier this year).  Line 1 is dark blue.


The bridge is not blue, except at night.

pale blue, but you get the idea

Line 2 is green.


It crosses the river twice.  This is the east.


This is the west.


Then there's line 3, which is orange


Line 4 is light blue.


Line 5 crosses the river twice by tunnel and bridge.  The bridge isn't quite purple, but some of the lights have a slight violet hue.


Line 6 is dark brown but doesn't cross the river.

Line 7 is dark green and crosses at Cheongdam.  The lights change at night between creepy blue-green and bright green. 


Line 8 is pink, and line 9 is light brown.  Neither of those cross the river.  The Bundang Line is yellow and is supposed to tunnel under.  The Shinbundang Line is red, and it might use the Hannam Bridge somehow.  Both of those lines are under construction now. 

So is the color rule universally applied?  Not really.  Does it look like it has been designed this way on purpose?  Yes. 

So how many MetroLink lines are there in St. Louis?


There are two and it appears that both use Eads Bridge.  Or maybe just the red line does. 


Eads Bridge doesn't need to be painted red, but perhaps if Metro is serious about keeping the MetroLink lines red and blue, then perhaps that could be incorporated into the lighting around the bridge.  Although from what I've heard barge operators didn't like Eads Bridge lit up at night and complain about lights.  As the Han River is lit up by dozens of bright bridges and all sorts of boats float happily underneath, I think the barge operators are being a bit silly.  Light reflected off of water is pretty!

Looking ahead at the "Moving Transit Forward" map,


I hope Metro puts BRT, light rail, and commuter on one metro map.  It would keep people aware of transfers and improve ridership on the buses.  If they're combined, we're looking at maybe five bus lines, and quite a few new rail lines.  Altogether on one map, maybe it would be as exciting as the map for Seoul.


With all those different colored lines on one map, we'd have a lot of bridges for the Gateway Foundation to make pretty lighting schemes for.  The I-70 BRT's color could be applied to the Blanchette Bridge.  The I-64 BRT's color could be applied to the Daniel Boone Bridge, and so on. 


If you liked this post, you might be interested in reading
Metrolink  /  Seoul Subway

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