May 21, 2009

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Sangbum Kim, Assistant Mayor and Head of City Transportation Headquarters, Seoul Metropolitan Government

Haechi is a mythical omniscient animal that can tell good from evil. Just like the unicorns in the West and the giraffes in China, it is an animal that stands for justice. According to fengshui, one of the oldest Oriental beliefs, the animal purifies the fiery characteristic of Seoul. For that reason, the animal symbol has been used widely in Seoul for a very long time. As the symbol of Seoul, Haechi is also believed to lead the citizens of Seoul in the right direction.

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Press Release

Cisco and the City of Seoul Launch Personal Travel Assistant Solution

The focus of this week's Connected Urban Development (CUD) conference in Seoul, South Korea is "Connecting Cities for Sustainable Living: An Urban Revolution." Seoul is certainly a leader in addressing many of the complex questions related to sustainability in an urban environment.

The city is working diligently to respond to climate change by introducing eco-friendly factors into urban planning, transportation control, building designs, and information and communications technology (ICT) management as well as by expanding the use of renewable energy, so as to reduce overall energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Seoul and Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group, the company's strategic global consulting arm, are developing the Personal Travel Assistant (PTA), a pioneering service that will allow people with mobile phones and other Web-based interfaces to find green transportation route options. The PTA pilot is one of the projects that has resulted from Seoul's participation as one of the founding cities of CUD, a public-private partnership aimed at addressing the unique environmental problems facing urban areas and at developing ICT solutions for cities around the world.

News@Cisco recently asked Mr. Sangbum Kim, assistant mayor and head of City Transportation Headquarters for the Seoul Metropolitan Government, to provide some background on Seoul's sustainability efforts and to describe some of the specific projects under development as well as those already in place.

News@Cisco: What drove Seoul to get involved in urban sustainability?

Sangbum Kim: During the past 30 to 40 years, the Republic of Korea, through rapid growth of its economy, industries and democracy, has reached the development level that took more than 100 years for the Western advanced economies. As a result of such compressed growth, challenges have emerged – including urban development without consideration to city environment and design, traffic congestion due to the rapid increase in cars, and air pollution.

The development of cities in and around the Seoul metropolitan area and the resulting conurbation have led to further acceleration of overcrowding in Seoul. Therefore, the most urgent priority for the city today is to develop and implement sustainable urban policies to overcome these challenging side-effects of rapid urbanization.

What advice can you offer to other municipal leaders who are considering similar endeavors?

In order to secure substantial results in improving the urban environment and responding to global climate change, it takes more than government alone. Such a big undertaking also requires a concerted effort by relevant specialists, citizens and corporations.

To this end, the government should create plans in consultation with relevant experts and should provide incentives to change the behavior of citizens and corporations alike.

What are some of the projects Seoul is working on?

In Seoul, we needed to introduce breakthrough ideas in transportation, because the social costs of the traffic congestion brought about by the high density in the Seoul metropolitan area have been increasing every year.

Seoul has a very high Internet penetration rate and world-leading ICT capabilities, so we have taken advantage of these strengths in developing several successful programs. These include smart transportation cards, which are used to pay public transportation fares, and the Seoul Bus Management System (BMS), which provides citizens with real-time information on bus arrival times (and also allows the bus service company to allocate buses efficiently). These successful experiences led to our decision to focus on transportation in the CUD project.

The PTA project that Seoul is implementing as part of CUD will provide more intelligent and convenient personalized mobile transportation information services to our citizens, and will contribute to a reduction in the city's traffic congestion. It is our hope that it will also contribute to the advancement of other relevant technologies.

Tell us about the PTA project.

Currently, Seoul is developing a pilot PTA program in two downtown districts: Jung-gu and Jongno-gu. The key goal of this project is to deliver real-time, integrated information for all the different modes of available transportation.

The PTA pilot service has proven how ICT can help provide opportunities to change citizens' mindsets about climate change. It does this by supplying travel assistant information, such as a route that ensures the least amount of carbon emissions, in real-time – anywhere, anytime.

Seoul PTA works with smart phones and devices that have embedded GPS and wireless Internet capabilities. They provide details of the most environmentally friendly travel routes, based on an individual user's current location and real-time traffic situation. Route information, in this instance, includes all transportation modes, including bicycle and pedestrian routes.

The green route can be updated in real-time, taking into account unexpected events such as traffic accidents. Internet-based scheduling programs such as Microsoft Outlook, which are also managed on the smart devices, can help users coordinate with their personal schedules.

Technologies developed as a part of the PTA pilot project will be included in the TOPIS (Transport OPeration Information System) project, a web-based traffic information service in Seoul.

By providing information about the amount of carbon emission for each transportation mode and route option, the Seoul PTA service helps citizens realize that their behavioral changes can be an effective tool in the fight against climate change. We believe that, in the longer term, the Seoul PTA service will also be able to include economic incentives, by providing details on the reduction of carbon emissions made possible by choosing the most green route.

The PTA's real-time traffic and eco-friendly route information will be provided using "Seoul Haechi," the mascot of the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

What challenges do you face in implementing this project?

In order to enable this service, data such as the speed of cars on main roads, details of public transportation (including buses and subways), parking conditions and users' locations must be interfaced and aggregated.

As of now, this information is being supplied by many different organizations, some of which are providing it in the form of commercial services. To be able to offer this type of service throughout Seoul, there must be coordination among the various organizations involved. Time-consuming, delicate fine-tuning work must be done to ensure the effective integration of traffic and transportation information.

Of course, one precondition of full-scale citywide implementation of our PTA service is a certain level of penetration of smart devices.

What lessons have you learned from your experience so far?

Through taking part in the international collaboration among CUD partner cities and Cisco, we have seen how each city, even when carrying out similar projects, has a different focus because of its unique size, spatial structure, culture and project priorities. While carrying out our project, we have been able to confirm that there is an ongoing effort at the global level to deal with climate changes, and we have realized that Seoul needs to make more specific and involved efforts in line with those efforts being carried out globally.

We have also seen, with projects such as the PTA, that providing personal mobility carbon footprint and green route information to citizens can encourage and facilitate more environmentally friendly behaviors.

What are some of the other sustainability efforts Seoul is undertaking?

Seoul is working in a number of areas to improve air quality, respond to climate changes and improve our urban landscape. These include forging mass transportation-based traffic policies, increasing eco-friendly transportation means such as bicycles, and improving conditions for pedestrians.

It is now possible to use mass transportation, such as buses and subways, in the Seoul metropolitan area with just one transportation card. In fact, smartcards are used for 92 percent of the 31 million trips taken each day.

An Exclusive Median Bus Line (EMBL) approximately 73.5 kilometers long helps ensure the timeliness and mobility of buses. Analysis of the EMBL implementation shows that bus speeds have improved by 18 to 82 percent, and buses arrive regularly within one to two minutes of their scheduled arrival times. By 2010, an additional 57.1 kilometer-long EMBL will be in place.

There are eight subway lines (totaling 287 kilometers) in Seoul; however, access to mass transit is still limited in some parts of the city. In order to improve this, seven lines (73.7 kilometers) of light-rail transit will be constructed by 2017 so that anywhere in Seoul, access to mass transportation will be ensured every 500 meters.  

We are also creating a more pedestrian-friendly environment. For example, Seoul completed the Choenggye Stream Restoration project in 2005. The stream, which was covered and used as an elevated inner-city highway, has now been restored and returned to the people of Seoul. 

In the Seoul Plaza and the Heunginjimun (the East Gate), city roads have been turned into green areas. And this August, on Sejong Avenue, the central road in Seoul, there will be a new plaza: Gwanghamum Plaza. 

Finally, we are actively promoting bicycles as everyday transportation. Along all major roads, exclusive bike ways will be made between the sidewalks and roads, so that citizens can use their bicycles more conveniently. Bike-friendly zones will be set up in all residential, commercial and tourist areas, and bicycle parking spaces will be provided in major mass transportation facilities such as subway stations. In the long term, bike rentals and electric bikes will be introduced and eco-friendly bike-related facilities will also be expanded.