Seoul's public bicycle system unfriendly to foreigners

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Fri, July 21, 2017 | 17:33

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Seoul's public bicycle system unfriendly to foreigners

Posted : 2016-09-20 16:35

Updated : 2016-09-20 18:49

A foreign resident in Seoul tries to learn how to use the city's bike-sharing service "Ttareungi" at a bike station in downtown Seoul, Tuesday. Many foreign users complain about the complicated registration process for the service.
/ Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

Buggy registration troubles foreign riders

This is the second in a two-part review on Seoul City's bicycle-sharing system. — ED.

By Choi Ha-young

Public bicycles run in Seoul, but with creaks for foreigners. The system, named "Ttareungi," provides English, Chinese and Japanese services for international users. However, it's not easy for foreign residents and tourists to enjoy this service, because of the complicated registration process.

Buggy website, limited choice

The service is available once people sign up on the website. Foreigners, who are not using a Korean mobile phone service or not fluent in Korean, have to use foreign language services.

"Once I registered my ID and password for the Chinese service, the Japanese website popped up," Li Xinge, 24, university student from China, said. The same problem happened to Mark Zastrow, 30, a science journalist from the U.S. He tried to access the English website but it loaded Chinese version.

"Unfortunately, the English site is very buggy and the payment system is limited," Zastrow said. "The worst thing about the English site is the actual payment process."

One obstacle is the type of credit card required to pay. "I found out that you can't even use a Korean credit or debit card — it has to be an international card," Zastrow said. Only foreign credit cards can be used on international versions of the website. That troubles foreign residents who are not fluent in Korean and don't have an international card.

The website suggests various options for hours of use: seven days, 30 days, 180 days and 365 days with different prices.

For foreigners, however, the option is closed. "Users can't change the dropdown selection from a seven day option, so there are no 30, 180 or 365 days options. Effectively, English-language users can only buy a one day or a seven day voucher," said Zastrow. The same problem happens with the Chinese website, Li said.

Imperfect translation confuses foreigners as well. "The 50,000 won reads ‘safety' in Chinese but I cannot understand what it means," Li said. Actually, the 50,000 won is a "deposit" for foreigners to prevent loss or robbery.

After signing up, there's one more step: card registration. For Korean service, people can rent the bicycles via the smartphone application without a membership card. However, since there's no foreign language app, foreigners must register a T-money card on the website before using it and tag it on the bike.

Cheap, convenient, always available

Despite this difficulty in registration, foreign users generally showed satisfaction with the system itself.

"I've used it on weekends in several locations, to explore the city. It was very cheap; almost ridiculously convenient, and always available," said Craig Urquhart from Canada, who is using the system pretty easily thanks to his Korean wife.

People were very satisfied with the quality of the bicycles. "We have a similar service in Paris, but Paris's bicycles are very heavy unlike Seoul's," Alban Mannisi from France, 40, said in front of a station near the City Hall. "There are some foreign users around me. It's particularly useful for lunch appointments."

Actually, this is what Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) aims for: short-distance travel for regular users. Zastrow said the service was very useful when he had an errand to run. "The bank may be a 10 minute walk from Hongdae Station, but it was just a couple minutes on the bike."

SMG is aware of the pros and cons of this system.

"At first we installed kiosks at each station for payment," said Lee Jeong-seop, an SMG official in charge of the public bicycle policy. This is what the Paris bicycle sharing system Velib adopted — people can buy tickets at a kiosk with a credit card or a debit card and take the bicycle right away, and there's no separate registration process for foreign tourists.

"However, through the previous way, it would have cost 800 million won ($701,500) to install 440 bicycles at 44 stations. But by using the web-based measure, it was only 2.8 billion won for 2,000 bicycles at 150 stations."

According to this calculation, the city government cut the cost by 20 percent. "It could be inconvenient for one-day users or tourists, but regular users can enjoy the system more comfortably due to many stations," Lee said.

hayoung.choi@ktimes.com