¡®Safer, Greener & Smarter¡¯

Expressways are to be built in line with current trends like climate change

Director Kim Hyeong-ryeol of the Road Policy Division of the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs discusses the significance of the 40th Road Day on July 7 and the country¡¯s ability to build environmentally friendly expressways and maintain them in line with the government¡¯s low-carbon and green growth strategy, making good use of the Intelligent Transport System. Here is what he had to say in an exclusive written interview with NewsWorld:
Question: What is the significance of the 40th Road Day and events planned for the occasion?
Answer: The occasion is to celebrate the construction and opening of the Seoul-Busan Expressway, which paved the way for Korea¡¯s dynamic economic progress in the ¡¯70s, renewing once again the challenging and creative spirit of those involved in the highway and traffic sectors and also to sustain the continuous development of technologies on highway construction and management.
They picked July 7 to commemorate the 1970 opening date of the Seoul-Busan Expressway in 1992 and various events will be held to celebrate the occasion with ceremonies, academic seminars and the exhibition of new highway technologies.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the opening of the expressway, which was celebrated in a morning ceremony held at the Seoul Education Cultural Hall, led by Prime Minister Chung Un-chan delivering a congratulatory speech followed by the award presentation to those who made contributions to the development of roads and highways.
In the afternoon, there were an academic seminar and the Construction VE Conference to renew the historical significance of the Seoul-Busan Expressway and its prospects in the days ahead. There was also an exhibition in the lobby of the Seoul Education Cultural Hall of photos on the construction period of the nation¡¯s super highway including some 100 photos on roads and highways that won awards from the Korea Expressway Corp.
Q: What is the current status of road construction and its prospects down the road?
A: The construction of the Seoul-Busan Expressway opened the age of modern highways in Korea. Currently, Korea has roads extending for 105,000 km crisscrossing the country including 3,800 km of highways.
The government has been at work to push its plan to build a highway network so that any point in the country can be reached within half a day. The government plan includes the construction of 7x9 main artery highways and a network of highways and byways (7x4*3R) in the Seoul area so that any point in the area can be reached in an hour¡¯s time.
Q: What is the current level of our road construction technologies and those at the international level?
A: When looking at road construction trends in advanced countries, you can see the increasing application of IT and high-tech in roads to meet various public needs including road services. In Korea, too, we want to build safe and environmentally friendly roads with greater efforts going into the development of low-carbon and green transportation technologies, while eliminating traffic jams on highways and securing energy independence.
In order to effectively cope with climate change, the government has plans to make highways smarter so that they can be safer and environmentally friendly by combining and applying technologies from high-tech, IT, automobiles and communications technologies.
The government has been carrying out R&D activities on the development of new technologies and materials for bridges such as suspension and cable-stayed bridges to cut costs (21 percent for suspension bridges and 11 percent for cable-stayed bridges). Our ability to build highways and other roads comes to 81 percent of those of advanced countries in comparison right now, but we are catching up with them gradually. The government wants to upgrade the technology-levels of all road and traffic technologies so that it will be able to meet various demands in the future by finding new paradigms for safety and the environment through R&D efforts.
Q: What is the current status of ITS and its development?
A: The intelligent transport system (ITS) means the application of high-tech IT to roads, autos and means of transportation and facilities and to make the management of transportation and operations scientific and automatic to upgrade the safety and effectiveness of transportation. With the emergence of green growth as a national agenda item, the government is geared up to make the existing roads and highways more effective by developing software to operate them with high-tech ITS, rather than expanding the hardware of transportation by building more roads and highways.
Our country¡¯s ITS began to be formally constructed in the latter half of the 1990s and it covers a total of 6,900 km of highways and byways in the country managed by over 50 traffic information centers. The entire expressway network, stretching for 3,447 km, have been covered with ITS, while 18 percent of general national highways, or 2,415 km, have been covered and 2 percent of roads, or 1,038 km. In Korea, ITS covers only 8.4 percent of all paved roads, or 81,830 km, while more than 30 percent of paved roads in Japan are covered with ITS, showing we have a lot of catching up to do.
The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs plans to cover more than 25 percent of all paved roads with ITS by 2020. The government plans to give more help to local roads, lagging far behind expressways and national highways. When a national network of expressways, highways and municipal roads is completed, it will ease traffic jams and raise the use of highways, boosting the effective control of transport demand and maximize the use of ITS, making a huge contribution to the realization of low-carbon and green transportation.
Q: Tell us about the preparations and plans for the ITS Busan World Congress?
A: The initial gathering of the congress took place in Paris in 1994 and the Busan meeting will be the 17th one, which is the largest such meeting in the world exhibiting all kinds of ITS products and technologies as well as academic presentations on ITS. Sometimes called the ¡°Traffic Olympics,¡± it is an opportunity for experts on high-tech transport and related businesses to meet and display new technologies, equipment and products and present new traffic technologies that will show the changes that will occur in the traffic systems in the future.
The Busan ITS Congress will have a main theme of ¡°Ubiquitous Society with ITS¡± with a sub-theme of ¡°Low-Carbon, Green Growth,¡± when it runs from Oct. 25-29 at Bexco in Busan. We expect some 30,000 participants from 80 countries to attend the global event, which will be made of 250 diverse programs including ministerial meetings, a meeting of all member countries, exhibitions, presentations of new technologies and academic forums and more, making it one of the biggest such gatherings in the world.
Our ministry will go all out to make the occasion one of the most successful in boosting Korea¡¯s position in the world as it is scheduled to be held two weeks before the opening of the G-20 Summit in Seoul. We also plan to take advantage of the global ITS event to display the excellence of Korea¡¯s ITS products and technologies to the world to spark the exports of those products with ITS being developed by the government as one of the next generation growth engines. There is no official ranking among the countries that have ITS, but Korea is considered to be listed among the top five countries in such areas as nuclear energy technologies and the commercialization of services following the United States, Japan, Germany and France, and the government aims to put Korea in third place by 2015 by developing next generation technologies in ITS and through R&D activities.
Such countries as the United States, Japan and countries in Europe adopted ITS as a national strategic industry from the early 1980s, whereas Korea started to work on ITS from the middle of the 1990s, lagging behind the leading countries. But we caught up fast by making good use of our IT, one of our strongest points, closing the gap with them. nw

Director Kim Hyeong-ryeol of the Road Policy Division of the Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs.


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