Relay of Policy Debate
on Road & Transportation

The road and transportation policy debate meeting to search for the direction of Korea's road policies took place on July 7 at KINTEX, presided over by Kim Su-sam, vice chancellor of Hanyang University. Following are the excerpts of theme presentations by four speakers at the debate including Kim Dae-ha, chairman of Road Technicians' Society, Kang Jong-kyu, researcher with the Korea Highway Corp., Lee Chun-yong, researcher with the Korea Land Research Institute and Shin Hi-chol, senior researcher with the Korea Transportation Institute.
The chairman of Road Technicians' Society, in his theme presentation, titled, "The Necessity for Road Regulations and Mandatory Requirement for Basic Design," said the Ministry of Construction and Transportation and local governments failed to require a basic design prior to placing orders for a real design after overall policies for effective public projects were implemented in 1999, preventing various problems from being solved. The failure also can be traced to the absence of master plans for deciding on annual budgets and regulations requiring a basic design are not clear.
When designating road lines upon the completion of basic design, it is necessary for roads to be built along with topography in line with article 32 of Laws on National Land Planning and Use, not just indicating locations along the new road.
Kang Jong-kyu, researcher with the Road and Traffic Technology Institute of the Korea Highway Corp. in his theme presentation titled, "Ideas to Expand the Functions of Byways," said the highway construction sector witnessed a huge growth with a mighty contribution to the national economy triggered by the construction of the Seoul-Busan Expressway in 1968.
Total length of highways in the country stood at 35,025 km, but it extended to 96,037 km in 2002, which facilitated automobiles, whose registered numbers totaled around 15 million, solidifying the base for automakers to expand.
But they failed to cope with changes in conditions and demand of times, especially demand by road users, losing confidence in the road sector in society, which is feared to reduce investment in road construction.
Lee Chun-yong, researcher with Korea National Land Institute, in his theme presentation titled, "Strengthening The Role of Roads and the Completion of Integrated Land Network," said the scale of highways expanded both in qualitative and quantitative terms since the 1960s. But with the growth in the role of highways, investors in roads have become skeptical about investing in roads.
But the attempts to set up more roads to resolve the increasing traffic demand have been facing many barriers. As the nation needs to spend more money on national defense and welfare, it has been suffering difficulties in pouring money into construction of social overhead capital like road. Many cite the need to expand the construction of railways instead of roads as they are more environment-friendly.
Some point out the roads in the nation have already been saturated. Others cite that some provincial roads are too large, thus causing excessive cost. Given this, some areas have been further isolated and natural sceneries have been destroyed. Against this backdrop, it has become more difficult to push for construction of roads.
But highways will continue to play a big role as in the past with diversified functions. Along with the plan for the balanced development of the country, highways will be developed under multinucleus integrated national space structure so that they could function as roads in the hub in Northeast Asia Economic Sphere in unlimited competition with neighboring countries.
Strengthening the function of roads and completing an integrated national land network is a task for the government and one of its major targets.
Shin Hi-chol, senior researcher with the Korea Transportation Institute, in his theme presentation entitled,"Direction of Road Construction in Comparison with International Practices,"said to strengthen the Korean economy, social overhead capital including highways, railroad, harbor and airport should be supplied at the right time and right place to reduce logistics expenses and spur corporate productions and investments to support effective productions and consumer activities.
There are two schools of thought on building a transportation infrastructure; One is for maintaining the current rate of investment in roads, while its opposition voices concern about an excess investment compared to the international scale and the scale of our country. There is an intense difference on road construction, requiring a special study on the matter.
The Policy Debate on Road and Transportation was held on July 7, presided over by Kim Su-sam, vice chancellor of Hanyang University, with a focus on how Korea? road policies should be directed.The conference was presided over by Kang Jae-hong, president of Korea Transport Institute. nw

The Policy Debate on Road and Transportation gets under way at KINTEX on July 7.