How to beat traffic hell

By Park Moo-jong

Seoul, the capital city of the Republic of Korea, with a population of 10 million, has many tourist attractions, including a route of Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) edifices, namely five grand palaces, scattered in its heartland.

This mega city also boasts of mountains and hills surrounding it on all the directions of east, west, south and north where citizens can enjoy climbing, trekking or hiking whenever they want as about a 30 minute ride on a bus, the subway or their car will take them there.

Many foreigners who have never been to Seoul were dubious about the fantastic natural environment of the city and asked me if that's true. And I used to tell them with pride: “Seeing is believing.”

Unfortunately, however, I am losing face these days due to the ever-worsening traffic congestion contributing to air pollution and fine dust from exhaust fumes, not to speak of prolonging the travel time to the mountainous areas.

In short, the traffic congestion of the metropolitan area, which is certain to become even more chaotic before the city leaders are forced to take “revolutionary” countermeasures, is notorious enough to make already quick-tempered Korean citizens more quick-tempered and force foreign visitors to waste their precious time helplessly on the streets.

The situation is getting worse of late because of all of the road work now under way day and night ahead of the June 13 local elections, including the pavement of motorways here, there and elsewhere.

There is no way the city government does not know the seriousness of the situation. City officials led by Mayor Park Won-soon must be racking their brains trying to find solutions.

Their idea appears to be quite simple: to have citizens park their cars at home and encourage them to use public transportation instead, boasting of the subway network, one of the best in the world and the “world-famed” bus only lanes in the center of city streets.

Even Mayor Park's administration surprised not only Seoul citizens but other people across the nation in January by offering free rides for those using public transit in order to encourage them to leave their cars at home for two days when the fine dust density reached the red level.

The policy cost as much as 15 billion won (about $15 million) although it did little to reduce the dust level. It only drew criticism, especially from opposition political parties, that the city wasted taxpayer money by providing free rides based on populism.

In particular, the city government introduced its signature bus-only central lane in 2004 and is ever expanding the system. In fact, the formula is working for the convenience of bus passengers but is causing tremendous damage to the traffic flow because the lanes for other vehicles had to be narrowed due to the relatively wide bus lanes.

The bus-only central lane has contributed little to reducing the number of cars to the betrayal of city government's expectations. While buses enjoy speed in the center of the road, other vehicles, mostly owner-drivers and taxies, have no way but to snarl through traffic on the reduced lanes. Those intruding the bus-only lane are fined 50,000 won ($50).

Adding insult to injury, the city administration is busy building bike-only lanes at the far left of main roads such as Jongno by reducing the space for cars. Alas, I have never seen a biker on the special lane during the past one month.

I am dead sure that the transportation officials of the city did not consider at all the character of the Korean people, even if they are very Korean. Why did they buy their cars? They bought them to drive. Koreans tend to drive their cars whenever they want regardless of traffic conditions. The policymakers overlooked this disposition of Koreans.

They need a swift of ideas. They need a change of the way they think once their policy appears to be ineffective. Better late than never.

In 1988 when the Seoul Summer Olympics were held, enhancing the national prestige with the international community, how to solve the gridlock was one of the important tasks for the host city and games organizers.

The choice was an “odd-even” system. Vehicles with odd or even numbered plates should be parked at home on alternate days. To be precise, if one's license plate ends with an even number, he or she should not use his or her car on calendar days that are even and vice versa.

The restrictive measure was successfully implemented during the global sports festival and in the following year's ASEM conference, with active participation by the citizens. Many still remember the sweetness of the system.

In 2008, Beijing also introduced the system for the success of the Beijing Olympic Games against the then notorious air pollution of the capital city of China. Indonesia is also adopting the compulsory measure to ease traffic jams and to prevent air pollution for the Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games to be held Aug. 18-Sept. 2.

No one would dispute the fact that the traffic problems in Seoul have reached their limit and something should be done as soon as possible to address them.

The experiment of the odd-even number system 30 years ago should become an impetus for a fundamental change of the traffic policy of Seoul to prevent the waste of precious time and energy on streets.

To encourage citizens to shift to buses and subways under the compulsory odd-even number system, the city government, in return, needs to consider positively reducing the automobile tax of car owners at a time when people complain that the government seeks to be desperate to rake in more taxes.

Park Moo-jong is a standing adviser of The Korea Times. He served as the president-publisher of the nation's first English newspaper from 2004 to 2014 after working as a reporter of the daily from 1974. He can be reached at moojong@ktimes.com or

emjei29@gmail.com

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