14 What Can the South Learn from the North Regarding the …
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passengers (Allen 2013). As a direct consequence, 31 bus companies went bankrupt
from 1995 to 2002 (Pucher et al. 2005).
Due to the urban sprawl of the Korean capital, resulting from its exponential
growth after the post-Korean War, most of Seoul urban dwellers experienced long
commutes, made of a combination of multiple trips, being synonymous of multiple
transfers between different transport modes available, or within the same transport
mode but between different operators. Because of the inexistence of an integrated
fare system at that time, public transport users in Seoul were spending tremendous
amounts of money on public transportation fare payments. Indeed, each time a user
had to transfer, he had to pay an additional fare. Evidently, there was an urgent need
for fare integration across the whole metropolitan area, and across all bus and metro
operators. Consequently, this became one of the main campaign promises of Mr. Lee
Myung-Bak, who was elected as Mayor of Seoul in the 2002 municipal elections. To
support this integration, a new fare scheme was devised by SMG, as part of a broader
public transportation reform, which would be supported by an integrated smart card
ticket system (Park and Kim 2013). The first step of the creation of an integrated
transport system was to change the ownership of the bus operation system in order
to create a semi-public bus system.
To do so, SMG first created the Public Transport Promotion Task Force, led by
the head of Seoul’s transportation sector, which was composed of Seoul city officials
and researchers from the Seoul Development Institute, who were to conduct the
transportation reform from an expert point of view. Following the Institute’s urban
transportation research division head guidelines and based on the advice from the
Public Transport Promotion Task Force, the Seoul Bureau of Transportation and the
Transportation Policy Advisory Committee then created the Bus System Reform
Citizen Committee (Kim et al. 2011), composed of 20 professionals from public
authorities, industry and civil society, which aimed at solving conflicts between
the different involved stakeholders (Kim and Dickey 2006). After a long series of
formal and informal meetings between the CEOs of bus companies and SMG, the
newly elected Mayor Lee Myung-Bak and the Chief of the Seoul Bus Transport
Association, representing the 57 remaining bus-operating companies in Seoul, signed
an agreement approving the bus reform and stating the change of the operational
content of the companies’ operating licenses. Once signed, it was just a matter of
time to have the IoT technological vector (smart card) implemented, that would
support the creation of a new integrated distance-based Automatic Fare Collection
(AFC) system, allowing users to freely transfer across and between modes (Kim and
Shon 2011).
The device, named T-money, was implemented and operated by a Special Purpose
Company, called Korea Smart Card Corporation (KSCC) led by LG CNS, a subsidiary
of the LG Group, and finally inaugurated on July 1, 2004 (Audouin et al. 2015). As
part of the Public–Private Partnership (PPP) concluded between SMG and KSCC,
the whole investment was performed by the private sector. The card itself is a plastic
card embedded with a Central Processing Unit (CPU) that can store and transmit data
when in contact with dedicated card readers, using Radio-Frequency Identification
(RFID) technology (Blythe 2004). When implemented, the T-money card was a
167
passengers (Allen 2013). As a direct consequence, 31 bus companies went bankrupt
from 1995 to 2002 (Pucher et al. 2005).
Due to the urban sprawl of the Korean capital, resulting from its exponential
growth after the post-Korean War, most of Seoul urban dwellers experienced long
commutes, made of a combination of multiple trips, being synonymous of multiple
transfers between different transport modes available, or within the same transport
mode but between different operators. Because of the inexistence of an integrated
fare system at that time, public transport users in Seoul were spending tremendous
amounts of money on public transportation fare payments. Indeed, each time a user
had to transfer, he had to pay an additional fare. Evidently, there was an urgent need
for fare integration across the whole metropolitan area, and across all bus and metro
operators. Consequently, this became one of the main campaign promises of Mr. Lee
Myung-Bak, who was elected as Mayor of Seoul in the 2002 municipal elections. To
support this integration, a new fare scheme was devised by SMG, as part of a broader
public transportation reform, which would be supported by an integrated smart card
ticket system (Park and Kim 2013). The first step of the creation of an integrated
transport system was to change the ownership of the bus operation system in order
to create a semi-public bus system.
To do so, SMG first created the Public Transport Promotion Task Force, led by
the head of Seoul’s transportation sector, which was composed of Seoul city officials
and researchers from the Seoul Development Institute, who were to conduct the
transportation reform from an expert point of view. Following the Institute’s urban
transportation research division head guidelines and based on the advice from the
Public Transport Promotion Task Force, the Seoul Bureau of Transportation and the
Transportation Policy Advisory Committee then created the Bus System Reform
Citizen Committee (Kim et al. 2011), composed of 20 professionals from public
authorities, industry and civil society, which aimed at solving conflicts between
the different involved stakeholders (Kim and Dickey 2006). After a long series of
formal and informal meetings between the CEOs of bus companies and SMG, the
newly elected Mayor Lee Myung-Bak and the Chief of the Seoul Bus Transport
Association, representing the 57 remaining bus-operating companies in Seoul, signed
an agreement approving the bus reform and stating the change of the operational
content of the companies’ operating licenses. Once signed, it was just a matter of
time to have the IoT technological vector (smart card) implemented, that would
support the creation of a new integrated distance-based Automatic Fare Collection
(AFC) system, allowing users to freely transfer across and between modes (Kim and
Shon 2011).
The device, named T-money, was implemented and operated by a Special Purpose
Company, called Korea Smart Card Corporation (KSCC) led by LG CNS, a subsidiary
of the LG Group, and finally inaugurated on July 1, 2004 (Audouin et al. 2015). As
part of the Public–Private Partnership (PPP) concluded between SMG and KSCC,
the whole investment was performed by the private sector. The card itself is a plastic
card embedded with a Central Processing Unit (CPU) that can store and transmit data
when in contact with dedicated card readers, using Radio-Frequency Identification
(RFID) technology (Blythe 2004). When implemented, the T-money card was a