Toward a Sustainable Transportation System:

Seoul Public Transportation Reform

Kyung Soo Chon

Department of Civil Engineering

Seoul National University

This paper introduces the recent major reforms of the Seoul metropolitan area’s bus system and the demand management of automobile transportation.  In the recent reform, the bus system of Seoul changed from a private to a semi-public system.  The 367 bus lines were reformed into 419 lines, which consist of trunk line, feeder line, wide area line and circular line.  In addition, many median bus-only lanes were built with improved curbside bus lines.  For longer commuting lines, new BRT system will be implemented soon.  And the newly introduced smart card fare payment system made the transfer system between subway and bus, or bus and bus economical as well as convenient.  Along with the improvement in the management of the subway and bus, demand management policies for the automobile transportation are being applied concomitantly.