It’s self-evident that transport has a hierarchy – a car is preferable to a horse, that you can’t dispute – and it’s assumed that a train is preferable to a bus. Not so, it seems, at least in Seoul. As from September, South Korea’s transport ministry will shut down the ₩300bn (€234m) high-speed train connecting the capital to Incheon International Airport, just four years after it opened. The train was unveiled in anticipation of the 2018 Winter Olympics and was popular with visitors but ridership was low before and after the competition: last year 77 per cent of seats went unoccupied. The reason? People prefer the bus. It’s cheaper and, if you’re coming in from outside Seoul, faster than the bullet train. This of course doesn’t hail the demise of high-speed rail but it’s a lesson learned: a new transport link has to have a reason and an advantage – people won’t take it simply because it’s superior on paper.