Socioeconomic Characteristics, Land Use and Travel Patterns in Seoul

摘要

The ancient city of Seul is ot a planned, but a naturally formed city centering around the downtown. Seoul's radiated structure makes the traffic problems difficult to deal with. Since 1988 when the Seoul Olympics were held, the number of vehicles has been increasing steadily. The new satellite cities generated a large number of long-distance auto drivers. The land price is high and land supply is limited for road expansion. To make it worse, the nationwide economic crisis is restraining the government financing for subway building. In every respect, fighting traffic in Seoul will be a difficult task in a near future. To respond to transportation problems under the circumstances, SMG sets its first priority of transportation policy as promoting public transit (for instance, bus, subway, and taxi) by improving their service quality. To encourage public transit uses, however, SMG thinks that TDM should be combined with transit improvement simultaneously. In Seoul, the share of private autos accounts for 60 percent-of the total volumes on the streets, but they carry only 20 percent of the total daily trips. Because of excessive private vehicle uses, the total amount of social costs is estimated to be 2,400 billion won ($2 billion) per year, consuming 2.9 billion liters of gasoline per year. Auto use is held responsible for 72 percent of the air pollution in Seoul. In order to increase the subway ridership, the SMG will provide more Park & Ride facilities from the current 21 lots with 4700 spaces to 61 lots with 28,700 spaces, and ten multi-mode transfer centers. To improve the carrying capacity and convenience of buses, SMG will expand exclusive bus lanes from 37 routes of 154km in length to 64 routes of 270km by 1998, and expand the central exclusive bus lanes. For securing consistent high quality service, the city has under consideration the evaluation of the service level of each bus company based on the results of customer interviews and service monitoring. According to the evaluation results, it plans to differentiate the financial supports among bus companies. To make transfers more convenient among buses and subways, the SMG plans to integrate different fare collection systems into. To have a more convenient and comfortable taxi service (easy to catch), the city plans to provide more deluxe taxis, increasing from now 4,652 vehicles to 20,000 vehicles, and permit increasing fares of regular taxis. It plans to expand the Call-Service system to the entire taxi fleet. As a result, the share of passenger mileage is expected to drop from 70% in 1997 to 60% in a near future. In addition, to prevent illegal taxi business near subway stations and remote areas, and to strengthen subway station accessibility, the modified taxi systems are under consideration, for instance, route taxi, van taxi, and so on. For securing qualified drivers, SMG will invest fare amount funds to build a welfare center for taxi drivers. To cut excessive auto use, SMG started charging, starting from November 1996,2,000 won ($1.68) congestion pricing for 1-2 occupant vehicles in Namsan 1,3 tunnels, and on major arterials linking the southern part of Han River with the CBD. The results of year-long implementation show traffic volumes reduced 13.6%, and that the average vehicle speed improved 38% from 21.6km/h to 29.8km/h. Therefore, the city plans to expand it in other major congested arterials in the near future. The employer-base trip reduction program has been implemented since 1995, and intends to reduce the Traffic Impact Fee (compulsory tax burdened on large size building owners) over 20% if employers (or building owners) implement trip reduction programs, and reduce travel demand over 20%. It is similar to the Regulation XV program applied in Southern California, USA. Also, the SMG plans to levy a local gasoline tax on the use of gasoline to control the excessive use (22 thousand km per car per year) of private autos. It is estimated that a 30% gasoline