Common Tasks in Roads and Traffic

Expectations run high on three international meetings on roads and traffic at Songdo, Incheon in October : Korea has forward-looking environmentally friendly road policies

To look at the history of roads in Korea, the length of highways and roads were practically non-existent soon after the nation's liberation in 1945 from the Japanese occupation.
Road construction began in earnest in 1962, based on the first five-year economic development plan. In 1968 and 1970, the Seoul-Busan and Seoul-Incheon Highways were opened, financed by loans from the IBRD, which brought the age of highways to Korea. In the 1980s, these highways and other roads found their place in the national life of Korea as very important means of transportation with increases in the number of cars as the national income expanded following the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Securing investment funds for the construction of highways and roads became very easy under the establishment of the Road Business Special Account by the government.
The management of road construction has been controlled by the government agency, which has been divided into seven classifications including high-speed national expressways, national highways and special and wide city highways and roads.
Korea had 104,236 km of roads in 2008 with 78.6 percent of them paved, taking care of 84 percent of passengers and 53.1 percent of cargoes in the country, as the country's topography and size favors land transportation with such short shipping distances for air and longer for sea along the elongated peninsula.
The construction of roads and highways in the past aimed at solving traffic problems and regional economic development for quantitative expansion, but its paradigm has been changing now in tandem with economic development and environmental and safety requirements, in addition to boosting the value of investments in highway and road construction.
Now the construction of highways and roads aims at achieving three main purposes: economic growth, integrated traffic and national life, with detailed strategies and tasks to provide a world-class level of road service.
Most of all, roads for economic development will be built to provide accessibility to all regions in the country so that main highways can be reached within 30 minutes from any point in the country, with seven main highways running from north to south and nine of them running from east to west.
The capital area's high-speed transportation network will be completed in 2020 to solve traffic congestion in the area, based on the formula, 7x4+3R, meaning seven roads from south to north, four from east to west and three circulatory roads.
Also, circulatory roads will be built around large and small cities to relieve traffic jams, to reduce the emission of toxic gases and for increased traffic safety.
Up until now, roads, railroads, harbors and industrial parks have not had easy connections to major national facilities with inconveniences in transfers and the hub-and-spoke functions from nodes, revealing shortcomings in unsuspended transportation system construction. As such, efforts will be made to build installations needed for strategic connections in the areas of main roads, especially connection routes.
Uniform access means exclusive roads will be made flexible to boost the effectiveness rate through various means such as the use of "Hi Pass"handled at unmanned "smart IC"and ramp metering, which is under study, along with the construction of "smart"highways, intelligent next-generation high-speed roads, to upgrade safety and convenience.
In 2007, traffic accidents averaged 580 cases daily around the country with 17 deaths and 920 injured with damages projected at 8.7 trillion won. The government plans to reduce the rate of fatalities to 12 a day on average in cooperation with local administrations and transportation authorities around the country by 2011 by improving the structure of roads and additional safety facilities with greater attention paid to public relations and education. It is also considering making roads eco-friendly by stressing environmental elements in roads and making the scenery along the highways and byways nicer. The government plans to drastically increase the number of roads for bicycles as a means to reduce the emission of C02 and for green growth.
Korea has 104,236 km of roads including some 3,400 km of high-speed expressways, a level good enough to be compared to those in advanced countries, and has always been keen on using new materials and developing new construction technologies combined with information technology to secure high-tech traffic technologies so that it may soon be counted among the advanced countries in transportation.
Roads are no longer just for transportation, but also should be in harmony with nature and become an environmentally friendly space where humans can co-exist in line with the call of the age.
Korea has set green growth as its major policy and is busy with the development of technologies by the industrial sectors with the belief that visible results from these efforts will soon emerge.
In just over two months, three major international meetings on transportation, including the board of directors meeting of the World Road Association, the Asia-Oceania Road Technology Conference and the International Road and Traffic Expo, will take place in Songdo, Incheon, with road and traffic experts totaling some 3,500 from 60 countries in attendance. These international meetings will be in line with common concerns held by various international road organizations on climate change and earth environment research. The upcoming events will be opportunities for traffic and transportation experts from both Asia and Europe to exchange information to boost the development of the world's road and traffic technologies and solidify the joint system for solving various tasks in the road and traffic sectors around the world. nw

By Director Kwon Byung-yoon of the Road Policy Division of the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs