Seoul Campus

Seoul’s Public Transportation Reform 05

Date 2017-09-19 Writer ssunha

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

Course Script:

[Transportation] Course 1-5_Seoul's Public Transportation Reform.pdf

Description:

< MODULE 5 >

Ok, so far we examined many aspects of bus reform. Generally we have very positive impacts from the citizens about the bus reform. Also, many people and many experts and public officials, even some foreign experts praised this bus reform because of its high outcomes.

However, still we need to go further for improving our transit services. Here, probably I can mention several aspects of our transportation policies. First of all I would like to point out some deficit problems of this bus industry. As I mentioned, the important elements of the bus reform is the free transfer and semi-public operation system.

Because of this new system the Seoul Metropolitan Government has some problem of these high amounts of subsidy. So as you can see here, the Seoul Metropolitan Government provides subsidy to the bus industry every year about 300 million US dollar which is a very big burden to the Seoul Metropolitan Government. So, now, we need to come up with ideas how to make this subsidy level at a reasonable level and how to reduce this subsidy level to the some smaller one.

Probably the best solution for this is to make our bus industry more efficient and more effective. So also we need to make some proper fare structure of the bus system. So this is the way and then how we can solve this issue in the future. Here, I would like to point out about the satisfaction degree.
In the previous slide in my lecture, I suggested I address that the citizens became satisfied with the new services, so even after several years as you can see here, the satisfaction degree of the bus services actually is increasing.

However, nowadays the satisfaction level will be stable at the same level. So we need to go up these bus services, probably we need to get some ideas how to raise this satisfaction level from the citizens. This situation may suggest that our citizens are asking another upgrade of our public transit system.
Now we need to look and we need to find out what is the most efficient way to upgrade this public service satisfaction degree.

Here is the case about the public transportation use encouragement. So this is the one case of the Sinchon trasit mall project. By introducing and by implementing this project actually the Seoul Metropolitan Government try to encourage the use of public transit to provide better services for the citizens around this area.

This street with a 550 meter street was changed to the transit mall where only buses were allowed to travel during the whole day, and the better walking environment was provided to the citizens. By doing that, the citizens can enjoy the walk environment in this area. So to get this better walking environment, car lanes were reduced, so this means that car drivers may experience worse conditions for driving.

So, again, here by encouraging the public transit use, and by discouraging the private cars actually we can raise about consensus about public transit system. When we look back our Seoul’s public transportation policies we become to know that the Seoul transportation policies have reflected the conditions of the day.
For example, during the 1970s and until 2000, the Seoul policies focused on infrastructure building, probably at that time the infrastructure building may be justified because during that time the Korea’s economic situation became better and better and the household income increased. So more cars on the road means such high demand of private cars that needed additional infrastructure.

So the supply should follow the demand, however an excessive use of cars actually resulted severe traffic congestion. To solve the traffic congestion the other mode of transportation was needed. So at that time public transportation reform may be the right solution to solve such problems. Now we need to look at another philosophy of transportation. So the human-oriented and human-centered transported policy may be the new philosophy of our transportation systems.

Under the human-oriented transportation policy, the most sustainable mode of transportation should be emphasized with the public transit. So based on the new system, probably we can achieve the sustainable transportation system in our city. Okay, so far I explained about the status of Seoul’s transportation and some background and procedure of the bus reform, and then I addressed some outcomes and future transportation policies.

I hope from this lecture, everyone who attended here and listening to this lecture have some ideas how to improve your cities’ public transit systems. So, again, I would like to emphasize the public transit system is very important for your city, and without thinking about public transit system your public transportation system cannot be improved.

Here I would like to finally suggest three key words about this transportation system. The three keywords are human, sharing, and environment. With these three keywords you can achieve your better transport system in your city. I hope this lecture will be really helpful for your study and helpful for your policy implementation.

Thank you for listening to our lecture.