Anjaga guide: how to read crowding

First, what the number means and how far to trust it.

What you see

For each Seoul subway station, the crowding level in 30-minute steps for weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Directions are split into up and down, and inner and outer for the loop line.

Made for commuters who want to sit on the way home and need to choose when to board.

Search a station or tap one in the list to open its page. All 282 stations have their own page.

Missing values stay blank. We do not guess to fill them.

Crowding is the share of train capacity in use, in percent.

According to the data, 34% means every seat is taken, and 100% means the train is at full capacity.

So at or under 34% a seat may be free, and between 34% and 100% seats are taken and some people stand.

Over 100% means more riders than capacity. This is common in the busiest rush hours.

It is not a promise of a seat. It is an average, and it cannot tell where a seat is free.

An average of 20% means only about half the seats are taken, so a seat is quite likely. At 60% every seat is taken and quite a few people stand.

Each step is the average of all trains that passed the station in that 30 minutes. It is not the value of a single train.

A 30-minute step at or under 34% counts as a time to sit. That is the only rule.

Steps in a row are joined into one range, and a step with no value breaks the range.

When you pick a boarding time, you see its value and the nearest times before and after when a seat is likely.

There is no score of our own and no ranking. Only the data and the rule above.

The busiest time is simply the largest value in the data.

Every page shows which quarter the average covers, and the date of the data file.

This is not live crowding. Incidents, delays and public holidays are not reflected.

The values come from rider counts based on transit card records, so they can differ from how a train feels.

Seoul Metro publishes a new file each quarter, and values can change when it does.

Weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays differ a lot, so they are shown separately. Pick the day first.

On site, station signs and staff come first.

The data is Seoul Metro's subway crowding data on the Korea Public Data Portal. Use is unrestricted, and we credit the source.

Only Seoul Metro lines 1 to 8. Line 9, Korail lines and other cities are not covered yet.

We collect no personal data. The privacy policy has the details.

How the data gets into the pages is written in the repository docs. Data outside the expected row and station counts is not published.