Finding a Solution
On a normal weekday you can drive from Seoul to Pusan in about 5 or 5 ½ hours. But on a weekend or a holiday, it can take between 2 and 6 times as long to
make the same trip.
During the 1992 Chusok holiday period, the 492 km. Drive took about 10 or 12 hours, and that seemed almost unbearable. The following year the drive took about 21 hours, and in 1994, some travelers reported that it had taken them 29 hours!
A drive on one of Seoul’s notoriously crowded inner city expressways on a
normal day is a traffic nightmare. Bumper-to-bumper conditions are an everyday
occurrence in Korean cities. It’s a way of life for people who live in or around Seoul, and it’s getting to be the same in all the large cities in Korea.
The traffic jams are more than just a constant inconvenience. They are
beginning to hurt the economy, as the transportation of perishable foods and other
merchandise takes too long to reach store shelves. Exporters, cannot meet overseas
delivery schedules because cargo transported by trucks cannot reach ports in time for
ship departures.
The problem began in the late 1980s, when Koreans started to get rich
enough to buy their own cars. Until that time, cars were considered to be luxury items. Today, having a car is thought to be a basic necessity.
No one anticipated that Korea would develop so fast, In 1985 we could
never have imagined that just 10 years later the roads would be clogged with so many privately-owned cars. Although road construction has been continuous, it hasn’t been
able to keep up with the number of new vehicles, which is being added to roads each
day.
Beside the traffic nightmare, there is also what might be called a “parking
hell”. It is getting to be nearly impossible for dome residents of apartment complexes to find places to park their cars at night. Cars are double parked behind other cars or
parked with two wheels on the sidewalk
City officials have tried many schemes to force citizens to use public
transportation, but most people insist on using their own cars. Now, even though most people don’t like the idea, it seems inevitable that some kind of “user’s tax” (gasoline
tax) will have to be imposed to encourage car owners to leave their cars at home.
There doesn’t seem to be an easy way out of the situation. Koreans are
finding out that even getting rich creates problems.
