Seoul Campus

Seoul’s Public Transportation Reform 04

Date 2017-09-19 Writer ssunha

Category: Transportation
Instructor: Ph.D. Joon-Ho Ko
Updated Date: 2017-09-19

Course Script:

[Transportation] Course 1-4_Seoul's Public Transportation Reform.pdf

Description:

< MODULE 4 >

So far we examined how and why such transportation reform was made in 2004. So from now we are going to look over some major outcomes over the reform. First of all, we can see the big change in the bus ridership. As you can see, here, the bus ridership has increased. For example, the bus ridership in 2005 increased by 14 percent compared to the previous years.

So this is a very critical outcome of this bus reform. Based on this reform, actually Seoul citizens became to use this bus again. Actually we gave some positive response to this outcome of the reform.Here we should look at this trend and it actually upturned right after this reform. So here, the trend of the bus ridership was decreasing,

however right after the bus reform the trend upturned to the increasing pattern. As I explained again, the transfer policy, the integrated fare system actually induced more transfers. So because of the free transfers citizens can easily transfer from one transportation mode to the other. As you can see in this data, so right after the reform, the citizens made many transfers. For some cases, the increase is about two times compared to the before the reform. So this means that some people may easily get to their destinations, in some cases making some transfers.

Here we need to look at the degree of satisfaction of the citizens. Before the reform, only 14 percent of the citizens were satisfied with the service of public transit. However, after the reform this satisfied citizen’s proportion increased by about 37 percent. So this is the big change after the reform, this means that this bus reform made citizens happier. And then we need to look at why the citizens became happier about this bus reform.

Based on this survey results, we can know that the critical factor of this bus reform is the free transfer. So this economic benefit of this bus reform is the major reason why the Seoul citizens became happy about this bus reform. The second one is convenient connection between buses and subway.

So based on this easier connection among the public transit, also made Seoul citizens happier. The next one is the improved bus speed. So based on this facts we can know that probably this bus reform make some successful story how we can change our public transit services in a very short time. This is the basic outcome of the bus reform.

As you can see here, in this graph, most of corridors we installed median bus lanes experienced improved bus speed. In this case the increase rate is about 30 percent on average. In the case of Dobong Mia corridor, the increase rate of the bus speed is more than 80 percent. So this is a quite big change. Based on this bus reform, actually we can make our buses the better mode of transportation

Additional benefit of bus reform is the bus travel time reliability. So as you can see here the bus’s travel time reliability in some cases are much better than that of private cars. So based on this fact, we can conjecture that probably Seoul citizens can make their precious time use more efficiently after this bus reform.

Here is another important thing. So after this bus reform probably safety issues may be mitigated. Here is the example. As you can see here, the number of accidents and injuries related to buses actually decreased a lot, in this case by about 25 percent.

So the reason of these reduced accidents is very clear. Before the bus reform, the car traffic and bus traffic went together in a disorderly manner, and because of this matter, there are lots of chances to have accidents. By providing and by installing median bus lanes actually we can divide the bus traffic with other traffic, so based on that we can realize this safer traffic conditions in Seoul’s roadways.

Another thing is the use of transportation cards. As I mentioned several times in this lecture, the transportation card is very important tool for realizing the integrated fare system. So here, the transportation card actually became the dominant method of payment for public transportation uses.

To enjoy the free transfers the citizens should use this transportation cards. Actually this is the encouragement mechanism for the use of transportation cards. So after 2010, the card usage rate is more than 90 percent for buses, and in the case of taxis more than 30 percent of passengers used this transportation card.

Based on current data, most of transportation users use this transportation card and 50 percent of taxi passengers also use this transportation card. So based on this transportation card use, we can make our revenue collection mechanism clearer, then probably we can have some efficient bus management scheme.