On Friday I’ve attended a transport conference about challenges and goals in Korea in the next 12 months. President Park Geun-Hye strongly emphasized in her inauguration speech that happiness of people and the promotion of creative economies are important matters for her and so the Korea Transport Institute (KOTI) implements these two things into their planning. The main presentation in front of all participants tried to answer the question how do you combine transport with creativity and happiness?
Creative Transport Planners
Concerning creative economies, transportation needs effective usage of big data to improve services as well as generated demand and new business for original ideas. The funny thing is that three weeks ago a guest lecturer at a my university said the exact same thing: big data needs big ideas. Such a planning direction could lead to innovative business models for electric vehicles or realizing of a vehicle-to-vehicle communication system.
A big revolution was already made through smartphones. These small devices completely changed our experience of commuting. It’s possible to use our time effectively or relax while using public transport. There is still space for improvements and creative approaches are necessary.
Smiling Commuters
Happiness in the transport sector can be realized through less congestion, comfortable public transit and traffic safety. People have to get real-time information and in the best case, they get advice how to deal with a sudden problem along their way. That’s actually again about big data and its usage. Health and environment are also main concerns of a happy life and for that the investments in R&D have to be expanded. For happiness and creative economies open platform is essential.
After that presentation, there have been six parallel sessions (according to the six research sectors of KOTI). I went to the session about road policies because it contained interesting things like bicycle traffic, road safety and road technology.
Compared to other OECD members, Korea’s big problem is traffic safety. The number of deaths through traffic accidents is very high. Most of the accidents happen because traffic violations of traffic participants (esp. car drivers). A lot of accidents happen also due to parking violations. Pedestrians are forced to use the road to pass an obstacle (= parking car) and so they expose them to a higher risk of accidents.
Cycling in Korea is so dangerous that even a governmental official, who actively works on bicycle policies, said that he won’t buy his kids bikes. It’s too dangerous to use the bike on a daily basis and it’s probably the main challenge for KOTI to secure cyclist’s safety. Another big problem for bicycle policies is that there’s a lack of data. I know that it totally contradicts what I said before. There’s plenty of data about metro, bus and car but not sufficient enough about bicycles. KOTI is the only organization in Korea which does research on bicycles!
The second presentation of that session said that there’s no more space to expand roads any further. The only solution would be to go underground and built tunnels for cars. However who’s going to finance that? The current trend goes also towards less lanes and more spaces for other modes of transport like BRT, bike lanes and wide sidewalks.
No End in Sight
KOTI has done a lot of projects in the past year and they are eager to realize more projects. There’s no end in transport planning because public transport, roads and the whole streets have to be adjusted to the current (and prospected) demand. Most of the ideas go into a good direction.
Related Links and Sources: Link to all files and presentations of the conference
