Strategic Planning

From Crisis to Success: How Seoul Rescued Its Public Transport

The Seoul Metropolitan Area boasts a transit mode share of 38%, while cars make up just 30%. This blog and this research article examined the reforms Seoul implemented in 2004 to improve its transport system.

Key Takeaways

• In the early 2000s, amid increasing car ownership and declining customer satisfaction and ridership, bus operators faced a dire financial crisis.
• In 2004, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) implemented a set of bus and fare policy reforms that changed the trajectory of transit in the city.
• Over 100 private companies operated services independently with routes that were highly circuitous, overlapping, and not well integrated with metro services.
• The Mayor tasked the Seoul Development Institute (SDI), the city’s ‘official think tank’, to study best practices and propose reforms aimed at improving efficiency.
• To build public support and engage key stakeholders, SDI convened the “Bus Reform Civic Committee”, which provided input on policymaking and promoted the reforms.
• A common, distance-based fare structure for the entire bus and metro network was introduced, eliminating the financial penalty of transferring.
• Bus routes were oriented to feed into and complement metro lines rather than duplicating them, allowing for a more efficient use of infrastructure.
• SMG took over network planning and implemented a new compensation structure for bus operators that rewarded operators based on performance, rather than ridership.
• By February 2005, 36 km of BRT lanes had been introduced, growing to 98 km by the end of 2006.
• Passenger dissatisfaction with buses dropped from 56% to 13% in just three months.
• Bus speeds increased by 33–100% on key corridors, and traffic injuries fell by a third.
• Ridership rose 14% in the first year; fare revenue grew by 10%.
• Fares for most riders decreased due to the integrated fare policy
• Today Seoul’s base fare is just ₩1400 (about US$1) for trips under 10 km, and an additional ₩100 for each additional 5 km travelled.
• These reforms ushered in a long-term “virtuous cycle” of rising investment and ridership that continues today.

Comment

Seoul did a brilliant job in reforming its system, especially in getting the governance right, a key issue in many places. It is noticeable that an external think tank led the reforms and this model may be worth considering elsewhere.

One area that may be difficult to replicate in many places is Seoul's very cheap fares, funded by a significantly increased subsidy. Many other places that provide cheap fares struggle to fund investments in enhancing their transit systems.

What Next?

Are there lessons your jurisdiction can learn from Seoul's reforms?

Strategic Planning

Why Portland Needs To Rethink Its Transit

There is a crisis in transit in America, with several cities' transit systems facing significant funding gaps and considering service cuts. Philadelphia has just made 20% cuts to services, and that may need to increase to 45%!

I have previously written about how transit in America is designed to fail because it is seen as a form of welfare. Although I am a big fan of transit, I am often critical of how we run transit systems, especially the mindset that the government should endlessly subsidise the system, regardless of the costs.

Portland, Oregon, is one of the cities facing a significant challenge, and I came across this report from the Cascade Policy Institute providing an anti-transit perspective on what has gone wrong.

Key Takeaways

• Trends that began decades ago - the dispersion of jobs and residences, telecommuting, and growing automobile ownership were accelerated or at least continued by the pandemic.
• TriMet, the Portland area's largest transit agency, still operates a route structure that was designed for the early 1900s.
• Prior to the pandemic, Portland increased population densities and supported transit-oriented developments.
• Metro and TriMet's biggest mistake has been to rely on Big-Box Transit, which is expensive to build, inflexible in the face of rapidly changing transportation patterns, and serves only a small portion of the urban area.
• The Westside Express Service (WES) costs $7.5 million a year to operate and never generates enough fares to cover much more than 8 per cent of its operating costs.
• While TriMet carried 42 per cent of downtown workers to and from their jobs in 2018, downtown held less than 10 per cent of all jobs in the urban area.
• Outside of downtown, TriMet carried just 3.4 per cent of workers to and from their jobs.
• The pandemic drastically reduced downtown's role as a job centre, and it may never recover many of its former workers who now work at home.
• Low-income workers who once took the bus have increased their automobile ownership and reduced their use of transit.
• The paper's recommendations include converting TriMet's downtown-centric route system into a polycentric system with multiple hubs all connected.
• It also recommends that the region should stop subsidising transit-oriented developments.

Comment

What makes Portland an interesting case study is that it follows the playbook that many urban and transport planners recommend: invest in transit and densify the city. So what has gone wrong?

Based on the report, TriMet has struggled to respond to both the pandemic and long-term trends. With a fare recovery of around 8% and serving only a tiny proportion of the population, the status quo is difficult to defend.

Although I think the report makes mistakes (it only has a partial view of the subsidies that cars enjoy), and misunderstands why the city has reduced taxes on transit-oriented development (government regulations undermining feasibility), its basic premise is correct. TriMet's results are unacceptable, and significant changes are needed.

What next?

How well has your transit system recovered from COVID? Are you growing transit as a mode share, or is it still in decline? If the latter, how do you intend to reverse that trend?

Net Zero

Speeding Up The UK's Transport Decarbonisation

The Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK has published a report on how to accelerate the decarbonisation of transport. Much of its analysis will apply to many countries.

Key Takeaways

• A gap remains between government policy and the best advice on the reductions in CO2 emissions needed this decade in transport.
• There remains a reluctance to disrupt the status quo, no matter the benefits change may deliver.
• There is a stark divide in people’s experience of getting around, with some having effectively unlimited ability to travel how, when and where they like, whilst millions face transport-related social exclusion.
• Electric vehicles have reached an important tipping point, but electrification is not the answer to inequality in transport access in the UK.
• The best way to address transport’s emissions gap is to place a renewed focus on equity.
• At the start of 2024, the highest emitting and wealthiest group in the UK produced 10 times more emissions from their domestic travel than the lowest emitting.
• IPPR recommended scenario:
  • More mobility options being provided to those on the lowest incomes, with the distance they travel each year increasing by 10 per cent by 2035.
  • Average travellers change how they get around, but the overall distance travelled each year not increasing.
  • Reductions in excess car use and flying by the highest emitters, seeing the distance they travel drop by 27 per cent.
• Recommendations to achieve the scenario include:
  • Establish a sectoral emissions reduction target for transport
  • Setting a modal shift target for a 10 per cent shift from cars to public transport and active travel by 2035, with a linked goal of reducing levels of private vehicle traffic by 25 per cent.
  • Raising fuel duty, increasing Vehicle Excise Duty on high polluting SUVs and increasing taxes on private jets and domestic flights.
  • Funds raised from these changes should be earmarked for investment in providing sustainable and affordable transport alternatives.
  • A moratorium on major road expansion projects and increases in airport capacity.

Comment

Seeking to speed up the reduction in carbon emissions from transport and reducing the car dependency of people on lower incomes in the UK are worthy objectives.

However, the IPPR has not modelled the impacts of its recommendations on economic growth, as I suspect that this will be the main argument against its proposals.

Additionally, would the UK be better off simply implementing a transport carbon tax? This would probably be more economically efficient, although I wonder if either IPPR's recommendations or a carbon tax are politically viable in the current UK political environment.

What next?

Does your country need to speed up its reductions in carbon emissions? Are you evaluating policies to achieve this?

Quick Adventures in Transport Wonderland

Here is what else I came across this week:

• A journey through time: 60 years of the National Travel Survey.
• Uber announces an Uber train.
• ​Germany’s train problems​

Blog

Sydney Metro: Great Success, Missed Opportunity

This week, my blog examined my local metro system (which I love) and asked how it could be improved.

Innovation

WeRide Launches First L4 Driverless Bus Line in Shenzhen CBD

The nearly 11km route takes 30–35 minutes. See here.

Tool

Let's make our cities bikeable!

A new tool to suggest improvements to cycling infrastructure.