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Transit System Between Bus and Subway will Take Effect Next Year

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Bus service routes in the Busan region will be completely reorganized to make convenient connections for subway transit in time for operating a system entitled, “Semi-joint management of local busses" from next year. Busan Metropolitan City announced on September 22 that a semi-joint management system of local busses and free transit between urban busses and subways will begin operating next year. A plan to reform Busan bus service routes has been prepared to increase convenience of transit and connection between modes of public transportation and to improve long-distance, winding and inefficient bus routes. The plan will go into effect from January next year when the reorganization plan is confirmed after collecting public opinions of citizens and businesses until the end of October. According to the reorganization plan, the city will consolidate routes to avoid overlap between subways and unified urban bus routes in the overcrowded downtown section. The city will abolish 44 bus routes out of the established 167 routes and found six bus lines. Moreover, other routes will be combined, so the number of routes is reduced to 128. To improve downtown congestion, 62 bus lines passing around Seo-myeon will become 39, around Busan train station 38 bus routes will be down to 25, and 31 lines in Nampo Dong will be reduced to 20. Accordingly, average service distance, which was 39 kilometers, will be decreased to 36 kilometers and service times of 123 minutes will be reduced to 109 on average. The city reformed the average winding degrees from 1.38 to 1.35 and drastically reduced overlapping distances with subways from 12.5 kilometers on average to 10.4 kilometers. With the reorganization, around 33,000 daily transit users of bus and subway will save traffic expenses of 8,300 million won a year and 1,400,000 bus riders will save over three minutes a day so it appears the collateral effect could be a huge sum of money that will be saved. Along with reforming local bus lines, reserved seat busses will be changed into regular urban busses and will connect to subway stations by circulating around the outskirts and the downtown circle-lines will be drastically established. Especially, the city plans to develop increased speed for the citizens of Busan by creating an express bus system connecting the outskirts and downtown with the shortest times since the system will use the Hwang-ryeong, Baek-yang and Su-jeong tunnels. The city will explain the reorganization plan through presentations in the five regions in Busan and collect public opinion at a public hearing on October 24. The final decision will be settled at the end of October. However, opposition by transportation businesses is expected due to decreasing the urban bus service routes and vehicles.

 

The source of news : Busanilbo,  2006. 09.26. 08:56