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| A traffic jam in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, on Oct. 5, 2017. / Yonhap |
City fails to deal with traffic effectively
By Lee Suh-yoon
Traffic congestion is getting worse in Seoul as the city and central governments fail to come up with effective measures.
It has become a serious problem in Seoul, as well as Gyeonggi Province and Incheon.
Seoul and Gyeonggi Province have often been at odds over their transportation policies. The provincial government has criticized Seoul for devising and implementing policies for its own good, while disregarding commuters from the province. About 70 percent of the people who work in Seoul commute from the surrounding area.
Commuters from these areas spend 1.5 hours on average a day driving to and from work, according to the transport ministry.
By comparison, it takes 110 minutes to travel from Seoul to Busan in the southeastern region of the country via the KTX high-speed train.
Mayoral candidates for next month's election have proposed various measures to tackle traffic.
Most of these transport policies are also aimed at curbing the recent fine dust crisis, partly caused by heavy traffic in the capital.
Park Won-soon, the incumbent Seoul mayor who is running for re-election, was heavily criticized for conducting "free public transportation days" during his term.
The measure cost 150 billion won ($14 million) to implement for three days but did nothing to decrease the number of private vehicles on the road.
Park's main competitor in the race, Ahn Cheol-soo of the Bareun Mirae Party, pledged to improve air quality at bus and metro stations.
To this end, he pledged to make public transportation a more attractive option.
"I will create fine-dust-free zones at 320 metro stations and 356 bus stations," he said in a campaign briefing held at the National Assembly, Thursday.
Some even proposed underground roads.
Kim Moon-soo, the mayoral candidate from the Liberty Korea Party, proposed a 3 trillion won ($2.8 billion) plan last month to build an underground road network.
According to this plan, Olympic Boulevard – a 41 km highway running along the southern bank of the Han River – will be closed and reconstructed to become part of the underground network.
"This way, the Han River can also be made more accessible to people," Kim said in a press conference on April 23.
Critics call Kim's proposal "highly unrealistic."
Overall, these proposed policies fail to address the root cause of the problem – an unrestrained increase in private vehicles.
Too many private cars
The number of registered passenger cars in the country has more than doubled to around 18 million since 2000.
In 2016, 82.5 percent of these passenger cars are used by one individual – rather than being shared within a household or a group, according to the most recent government data released Wednesday.
In 2010, the figure was just 61.3 percent.
As a result, the traffic volume caused by these passenger vehicles increased by more than 20 percent from 2010 to 2016.
The increase in the number of private cars is in part due to the inconveniences of using public transportation.
Those who commute by public transportation in Seoul spend an average of 135 minutes a day, according to a 2017 Job Korea survey.
Even if the commute is shorter via public transportation, many commuters choose to go to work by car to avoid standing in cramped spaces on buses or subways.
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