‘Pursuing Efficient, Green Road Policies’

From Sept. 23-26, the REAAA Conference, PIARC Council Meeting and the ROTREX 2009 took place, and various diplomatic activities were undertaken to support overseas advancement of Korea construction companies and to boost the international status of Korea. Following are what Dir. Gen. Lee Jae-hong for Road Policy of the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs spoke on the significance of the international events and road policies in the days ahead in an interview prior to the int’l meetings.
Question: Can you please introduce the major participants in the meetings from various countries and the scale of the meetings?
Answer: The events being held on Songdo are a global festival with some 20,000 people including delegates from many countries around the world participating. Key participants include the PIARC chairman, cabinet ministers from eight countries including Vietnam, Malaysia, and two vice ministers, and road experts from 60 countries totaling 1,500 to participate in such events as seminars on road technologies, and other international events.
Q: Can you tell us the plans to deal with each government represented in the events?
A: We will conduct a variety of diplomatic activities with cabinet ministers of Vietnam, Malaysia and Tanzania, among others, to pave the way for our construction firms to advance into those countries and boost our country’s international prestige. The exchanges in the area of construction would be a key subject of those bilateral meetings. With Vietnam, in special, an MOU on mutual cooperation in a number of areas including road, railroad and harbor will be signed to strengthen cooperative relations with each other.
Q: What are the agendas for the meetings you will participate?
A: I will attend the meeting of the PIARC Council Meeting with major subjects being “Road Policy Directions to Cope with World Economic Crisis.” Our measures to deal with the crisis are increased investments in SOC projects to expand the futuristic growth , promote the R&D projects on the road sector, invigoration of various civilian business projects and road construction projects for the age of green growth. Those plans will be announced at the board meeting.
Q: Can you please update us on the road construction capabilities of our construction firms?
A: It is very difficult to say exactly quantify their capabilities. But I am very proud that the level of their capabilities for road construction is on a par with those in advanced countries and will be further developed as R&D on technologies will be further expanded through increased investments in the area.
Q: Can you please tell us about the greatness of the Incheon Grand Bridge which is about to be registered on the list of globally known great bridges?
A: The Incheon Grand Bridge, 21.3 km long, is the 5th longest cable-stayed girder bridge in the world, and the 6th longest, if v-type tower cable-stayed girder bridge, arch bridge and extradosed bridges, among others, are put together. The bridge is the longest bridge over the sea in the country. It was listed among the 10 most surprising construction projects in the world. It was built with the FSLM construction technology, which is used to build a 50- meter section of the bridge span on land and lift it up with a sea crane that can lift a 3,000 ton object and connect it with the bridge, cutting by 57 days to build a 100-meter bridge span.
Also the pine belt construction method was used to build it, saving many days of work. By building the bridge, the Korean construction firms were able to advance the construction technology level a step up.
Q: How is the environmentally friendly road construction progressing?
A: An environmentally-friendly road means minimizing the environmental effect on the entire stages of road construction from design, construction and to operation. The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs has been trying to lead the construction of roads that are environmentally-friendly, allowing nature and people to co-exist.
In order to do that, the ministry has made up ‘the directions for the construction of environmentally-friendly roads’ and ‘the directions for turning hill sides green and ways to go about it’ so that they may be used in all the areas of roads from planning, design, construction, and to maintenance. The ministry has been monitoring if these directions are pursued, along with the revisions of the directions where needed.
At the same time, in order to solve the pollution in the air caused by toxic gases by exhaust fumes from increased transportation volume and traffic congestions, the ministry has been pushing the construction of circular roads on the outskirts of large cities to avoid traffic congestions and make the road sides green among its various policies.
Q: Can you introduce the expansion of the application of intelligent transportation systems?
A: ITS is a smart traffic SOC with a low cost and high effect as well as high-tech futuristic green transportation system boosting safety and effectiveness through science and automation by mixing traffic information with information technology.
The development of IT and other high-tech lead to increased exports and the application of the ITS would expand to such areas as BIS, Hi-Pass, BMS, and TMS, among others. Currently, the smart highway project is being pushed to apply the IT, automobile technology and others with the road areas. The smart highway project is designed to make research on the next generation intelligent highways that can maintain the best safety conditions on highways both night and day under all kinds of weather conditions, improving safety, and convenience. Taking the Hi-Pass roads included in the smart highway project for example, the management system by roads will be turned into a no-toll system to cut the time to pass through the tollgates.
The Korea Transport Institute found out that if 1,000 km of ITS is built, it will save 8.26 million liter of fuel and reduce 18,828 tons of CO2 as a result of its research.
As such, the government included the ITS on the list of new future growth engines and plans to nurture the system. The 17th ITS World Convention, Busan will take place next October.
Q: Can you please tell us about future road policies?
A: Following the emergence of the current regime, the importance of low-carbon and green growth has appeared visibly and internationally, concern and fear for climate change and environment have been growing, also.
Under such circumstances, the policy paradigm for roads has been changing from the development oriented to environment, and safety centered ones, to software from hardware, local new road construction to city road volume improvement. The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs has a vision to build world top-level road services by introducing ‘fast road’ ‘convenient road’ and ‘sustainable road’ ‘effective road’ ‘safe road’ and ‘welfare road’. nw

Dir. Gen. Lee Jae-hong for Road Policy of the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs