At 6:50 a.m., a group of people with eyes half-closed make a long line outside Seoul Station.



“This is quite usual (to wait in a long line). Even if the bus is packed, I will still hop on and ride the bus standing for the entire 40 minutes,” said Jeong Hye-ryoung, who commutes to Pangyo in Gyeonggi Province for work every day.



Like Jeong, as many as 24,000 or 12.5 percent of bus commuters in the metropolitan region travel crammed into a bus daily, barely standing up and holding onto the seat for safety every morning. Gyeonggi Research Institute estimates an average bus commute to be over 61 minutes.



According to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, there are 2,203 red buses -- which run between downtown Seoul and nearby suburban areas in Incheon and Gyeonggi Province -- on 166 bus routes.



Passengers wait at a bus stop. (Yonhap)

In July 2014, the Transport Ministry banned standing in a traveling bus for safety reasons. But faced with protests from commuters, the ministry eased the restriction, instead promising to replace the packed single buses with double-decker buses as soon as possible.



Buses operated by Gyeonggi Province that travel to and from Seoul -- also called Mbuses -- are normally equipped with 39 to 41 seats. But double-decker buses can carry more passengers, with 79 seats.



South Korea’s first double-decker bus was introduced in December 2014, as part of a pilot operation by the Transport Ministry and the municipalities to alleviate road traffic.



There are nine double-decker buses running in Seoul so far, still far too few to dramatically ease the packed public transportation situation. Around 10 double-deckers will be added by August.



The first double-decker bus introduced by Gyeonggi Province to operate between Gimpo and Seoul (Yonhap)