Reduction of Car Travel: Transportation Demand Management (TDM)

From 1970s to 1990s, Korea’s transportation policy was tuned to the supply side, with much emphasis on construction and expansion of road networks to make up for the absolute shortfall in capacity. In that period, gap between supply and demand widened as rapid economic development led to sharp rise in transportation demand.

The number of personal cars registered in Korea had risen eight fold to 2,075,000 units in 1990s from 249,000 units in 1980 but 20% of road expansion for the same period fell far short of meeting the explosive demand. For those reasons even during the 1990s tremendous amount of efforts had been made to expand facilities by promoting private investment in transportation and construction at the government level.

In Seoul alone, the number of registered cars had risen to two million units in 1995 from one million in 1990 in just five years. Although expansion of street networks had been continuously promoted due to a soaring rise in the number of cars, road supply failed to catch up with the demand. Therefore, traffic congestion in the downtown in 1980s had been part of daily routine and in the 1990s traffic congestion in the major arterial roads had become more serious. In order to provide traffic facilities, large-scale road constructions had been conducted including expanding urban arterial roads and interregional expressway network, connecting City of Seoul and new town.  

Despite such a massive road expansion, the traffic congestion aggravated even further due to a soaring rise in the number of personal cars even after 1990s, leading to a continuous slower travel speed in Seoul. Advanced cities across the world also shared the view that additional supply of traffic facilities alone would not solve traffic congestion. In line with the times, the SMG has introduced TDM since 1990s as a strategy to mitigate traffic congestion.