The Familographer thinks he’s found where Korea wastes a million liters of petrol daily:
The reader may ask, “Who is responsible? Where does the loss occur? What happens to cause the fuel to be wasted?” The answer is simple: “Look around! It’s everywhere before our eyes!” More to the point, if you are driving (and I am), you are one of many who will be burning fuel unnecessarily. It is nigh impossible to drive more than a few hundred meters through developed zones of the country where traffic signals are present at intersections and crosswalks, and not spend long minutes, engine idling, but with no pedestrian or motorized traffic requiring the right-of-way.
A significant number of motorists, out of frustration, impatience or both, simply ignore the offending signals and shoot through, adding hazard to the already significant burden where a safe crossing should be routine. The picture is more puzzling still since the nation is touted as one of the most technology-webbed countries anywhere. Why, then, does it not show any inclination to embrace traffic-control technology, based on sensors and demand-driven signals, use for decades in the US, so widely imitated here in other ways?
The photo on his post speaks for itself.
Read the rest on your own.
35 Comments
I been saying this for years. Traffic signals are prehistoric here. There are pedestrian crossings on major highways set to hold traffic based on a timer. Dozens of cars on six lanes waiting for nothing. The post should have had a picture of that (wouldn’t be hard to get one). In such a crowded nation, it’s an absolute farce.
The solution? Naked streets, certainly at least a name Marmoteers can support. Here’s the idea:
“Hans Monderman pioneered the concept of the ‘naked street’ by removing all the things that were supposed to make it safe for the pedestrian - traffic lights, railings, kerbs and road markings. He thereby created a completely open and even surface on which motorists and pedestrians ‘negotiated’ with each other by eye contact.”
As the great man said: “If you treat drivers like idiots, they act as idiots. Never treat anyone in the public realm as an idiot, always assume they have intelligence.”
(See http://orientem.blogspot.com/2.....-dies.html.)
If you are on the streets it is very apparent that at least 75% of these vehicles are occupied by ONE person. What is the average per capita income of Koreans? 3.5 million won per month? How can so many afford to spend 25-30+ million won on a car (plus monthly insurance) and almost 2000 won a liter on fuel.
This fuels (
)my belief that the government pays people to drive around all day to provide the appearance of western style affluence to the Korean people and the foreigners who live or visit here.
Taxi cabs, buses, and bongo trucks are the enforcers of this affluence. They appear at critical locations to slow traffic and enhance the effect.
I always wondered about this too. Narrow roads and the lack of dedicated turn lanes makes controlling the flow very challenging, I’m sure, but there doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the lights at all.
apparently the author has never experienced the fortune of having unqualified cops arbitrarily controlling the traffic lights from the corner of a busy intersection. i cringe every time i see them with that little controller in their hand.
#1,
Same here. It’s quite obvious. One doesn’t need to have studied urbanism or civil engineering to know that things were not well thought out.
A few years back they build a road that should have made it faster and easier to go from one side of my town to the other…but they put traffic lights at every 500m or so, where they simply aren’t needed (without sensors to boot), as if they expect the city to expand overnight. Thanks to these lights, it’s no faster to cut across downtown than to drive on this brand new 6 lane highway.
#4,
Oh, there are patterns all right. I noticed that at night I’ll get green lights only along a 1km stretch of the road near my home. But, when I’m traveling along the same road in the same direction during rush-hour, all I get are red light after red light. Whoever came up with that idea deserves a medal.
Do you know what else wastes 100 million tons of fuel a day in this country? Not grasping the concept of insulation. No double-doors on restaurants. Sit in a restaurant on a cold day, a group of people comes in, and all the heat on the restaurant (that hasn’t already leaked out the cracks or passed thru the cheap or plastic walls) is out the door and you have to wait a few minutes before the heaters, on full blast can replace the lost warmth, hopefully before the door opens again.
Maybe it’s my engineering background and the desire to minimize heat loss and maximize efficiency… or maybe I’m from a country that years ago realized that insulating buildings and keeping them as airtight as possible saves money and provides a more comfortable environment.
Traffic sucks here too.
Traffic signals can indeed be prehistoric (as seem to be some of the police officers operating them at certain times of the day.) Road designs are often poor, but I suppose that by the time many of them were built they had already become obselete in terms of how much traffic they were designed to handle, making the problem a lot worse. (In all fairness to planners, I don’t think it would have been completely possible to have predicted the degree to which the number of cars, trucks, and buses on Korean roads have multiplied in the last 20 or 25 years.) Needless to say, reckless/careless driving doesn’t improve matters.
The refusal to car pool here boggles the mind. Even workers with modest salaries seem to aspire to drive the largest, least fuel efficient cars possible, for which they have to pay a small fortune for gas, and they are somehow above sharing the driving with a couple of coworkers or friends who might live nearby! Environmentally and economically unsound, but as long as driving solo in an oversized car makes you feel better than people who don’t, screw the expense and the polution, right? This kind of car culture is not unique to Korea, but a lot of Koreans have got it really bad. There are plenty of people that would rather drive to Chongno from Shinchon in rush hour, struggle to find a parking place, and then sulk because they’re drinking Cokes all night, when they could hop on the subway for a buck, be there in 10 or 15 minutes, and not have to worry about having a few beers with their friends.
It just slays me when the cops manually control the lights. More under-road pedestrian passages need to be dug. We all know how to walk the sandbags during the rainy season.
#8,
Find out who owns the construction companies and the refineries and you’ll have an explanation to why buildings aren’t well insulated.
I see an endless stream of one person-per-car running through the red lights, even in school zones.
Raise the price of fuel until people can’t afford to drive anymore.
On a four mile stretch of road on hwy 13 between Songtan and hwy 38 interchange there are 13 traffic lights and all of them are useless. One is a stoplight in front of a 6 family apartment building another stops traffic for oncoming traffic from a rice paddy road that never has traffic on it. All on timers. Such a waste of fuel sitting there and a waste for the power station generating all that electricity powering all those useless lights, hundreds of thousands of them all over the country.
There’s lots of other stuff that pisses me off but the biggest is no access to the freeways and toll roads on my motorcycle. I hate having to take the regular highways all the time to get somewhere. Sometimes I want to get somewhere in a hurry like say Seokcho to tool around in the mountains with my bike exploring new roads. Well it takes the better part of the day just to get up there instead of just blasting up on 1 and then 50 across. The south coast? forget about it. It takes all day just to get down there.
I dunno Railway. In many parts of Seoul they have actually increased pedestrian crossings and bus lanes, at the expense of traffic flow, precisely because they wanted to make it more inconvenient for motorists to get around, and easier for pedestians and surface buses.
From a civic planning perspective, I think they have something of a point.
Korea can’t really use public policy to discourage car ownership, since car makers are a big part of the economy. All they can do is make policies to discourage car use.
I drive a bike most of the time. I actually think Seoul has a pretty good road system, especially when you factor in the use of crosswalks, sidewalks, oncoming traffic lanes, etc, that motorcyclists can use freely.
For sure too much gas is consumed here and there a massive amount of efficiency must be lost through the lack of traffic control here.
But…and I’m obviously changing the subject a little here, has anyone noticed that for 9mths a year the local council pours hundreds of thousands of tonnes of water all over the city streets every morning? Now that is purposeful wastefulness without reason, I’ve long sought after a reason why they do this but can’t accept the fact that authorities are naive enough to believe it is an effective and environmentally friendly way to clean the road? It drives me mad!
Plus wet road = less grip = more accidents = more insurance claims = higher insurance premiums
Wet road also = more water wasted every day to clean off your car that has picked up a load of wet dirt in the morning
Who do we have to contact to find out why they do this all year long?
Mr. Kim
Traffic is just as crap in Toronto as it is in Seoul. But you know what people in Toronto don’t do like they seem to love doing in Seoul? Sitting in a parked car with the engine on having a nap or watching tv. One person driving in a car is at least going from A to B. It is the people watching tv/napping in a parked car with the engine on who are the biggest idiots of them all.
#10. More Underground walkways? Haven’t you heard? Koreans are growing older and LMB, when he was mayor of Seoul, promised to build more crosswalks in order to secure more votes.
How much does a traffic sensor cost in comparrison to the cameras that are up everywhere now? Then again, the sensors only contribute traffic control, safety, improved fuel efficiency and some would argue: peace of mind. They don’t generate any revenue so you’re not likely to see them anytime soon.
Naked streets? Treat drivers as if they are intelligent? I have some friends who have done that and they now have tire tracks running permanently up their ass.
I believe car companies developed greatly in Korea, and car ownership has been a symbol of newly acquired freedom for Koreans. but there are certainly too much cars in Seoul, and too much big cars especially… on my last trip to Europe I was surprised with the amount of small (well… regular size) cars, I simply got used to the fact Korea is full of SUV.
so I thought originally that all is lost and there will never be any policy that would lead the economy to shoot itself in the foot by not encouraging car ownership. however, if Hyundai’s & Kia’s sales abroad continue to develop, and foreign brand cars take a bigger share of the cake here, then hopefully policy makers won’t feel afraid to attack this issue. the high price of fuel might help in the process, as well as some sort of tax targeted at some specific places in the city (like it’s done in London or Singapore for example). people will certainly not be happy, and more importantly they might not see the need: it feels like people here got used to driving 16 hours during chuseok to visit the family in Busan (not including the return trip…).
#16 The city can and should install ramps and elevators. The old fuckers should not be on the streets in the first place!
At least they use the lanes now… in ‘93, they apparently hadn’t grasped that concept…
As the great man said: “If you treat drivers like idiots, they act as idiots. Never treat anyone in the public realm as an idiot, always assume they have intelligence.”
But sometimes an idiot is still an idiot, no matter how you treat them.
Why, then, does it not show any inclination to embrace traffic-control technology, based on sensors and demand-driven signals, use for decades in the US, so widely imitated here in other ways?
Huh? This is used in the US? Where?
Huh? I wouldn’t exactly call it standard practice.
It’s used everywhere in Australia. Even the “outback”. They have these little things on the pedestrian crossings called “buttons”.
It’s used everywhere in the US.
I have always thought in regards to saving fuel that Korea would be a perfect market for introducing hybrid cars. Hybrids would be great for the traffic jammed streets of Seoul and would greatly reduce air pollution as well. Plus the ajushis (especially the police) sleeping with their car idling wouldn’t be using any fuel either.
I love driving in Seoul.
GI Korea,
I don’t think the hybrid will be a big seller here because Koreans can’t claim that they invented the technology.
And as for the self important traffic police, the most effective thing they can do is keep the gridlock at bay during rush hour. (I actually saw them stop an express bus near city hall and take the drivers license the week after the inaguration) Keep the gloved hands off the traffic controls, you only know what you can see from your post, you don’t know that eight lanes of traffic are backed up for three kilometers because of your actions.
We must remember this is the first generation of car owners. (hence the poor driving etiquette and wild west feel of the roads) Common folk didn’t have their own cars until after the 88 Olympics and their driving mentors are the bus and taxi drivers with all the “experience”.
MARMOT, Are you taking notes for the next Seoul Town Hall?
#27 I have always thought in regards to saving fuel that Korea would be a perfect market for introducing hybrid cars.
Hybrid cars are a jerk-off. They do not save fuel. The under powered engines have to work twice as hard as normal engines. What needs to happen is reforming the traffic signals and, get rid of the cross-walks. Oh, and Marmot, when you attend the town hall meeting, ask if the po po can start ticketing the fucking motor bikers who barrel down the sidewalks.
Hybrids are a waste of energy. Think about it: you use fuel to produce electricity. It’s just a tad less convoluted than the hydrogen car. What people need are electric cars (or even air cars). It would be perfect for countries like Korea where most of the electrical power is produced at nuclear power plants.
They’ve had this system for decades in many parts of California.
Have you ever traveled in the U.S. outside the gray confines of the Bronx and northern New Jersey?
@31 - While nulear power production as a percentage of the total here in Korea certainly outpaces countries like the US, According to the IAEA as of 2001 it accounted for 39.2% of production. This is only slightly higher than the 38.7% produced by coal. In all, thermal sources (coal, gas and oil) account for 50.9% of production. Hydro power is about 9.6%.
Link to PDF: http://tinyurl.com/2rhbqc
Seoul has some of the most confusing and poorly planned highway interchanges ever. Take the two highways on either side of the Han for instance. The highway on the North side only connects to a couple of the bridges that cross the river, so if you miss one, too bad for you, you’ll have to travel half-way across the city for another chance. For most of the south side, there are actually two highways running parallel to one another, which makes for some very interesting exits, especially near Yoido. To go to Yoido if you’re travelling east bound, you have to make a loop, travel west bound,then make another loop, and travel east bound again before taking a left - just crazy. And then, lots of times, they’ll put the sign of the exit BEHIND the actual exit! So, it looks like the exit is coming, but woops, you already passed it. And then there’s the usually very short lanes for merging, and other fun things, like not allowing left turns, or u turns for miles. I can’t understand why anyone would choose to drive a car during rush hour here.
#30 & #31 the best kind of science, slag it off without investigating it or trying it!
I had a Prius it most definately saved me fuel in exactly the situation we’re talking about, slow high density traffic.
#30 “The under powered engines have to work twice as hard as normal engines.”
Actually they don’t most of the time, during acceleration they are supplemented by the electric motor which has a huge amount of torque to easily overcome inertia. At low speed with gentle acceleration they are switched off altogether so are hardly working twice as hard since the electric motor is doing the work. At steady expressway speeds the electric motor recharges off the surplus electricity, and the normal engine has to do very little since it is only maintain inertia not accelerating and is therefore easily powerful enough. In any case at 1,500cc the motor was only marginally lower than a standard europena midsize. (1,800cc.) On general highway driving the benefits were marginal, because the electric motor comes in very little, mostly when accelerating to overtake or up steep hills, however, on urban rush hours I was getting huge improvements over my previous car, otherwise similar in size & power.
#31 “Think about it: you use fuel to produce electricity”.
Actually thats the straight electric & hydrogen cars you then go on to recommend. Fuel is used to make electricity at the power stations (albeit more efficiently perhaps), electricity is used to procude the hydrogen, then you it has to be tankered everywhere just the same as gasoline, and kept under high pressure…etc…
Yes, the hybrids use surplus electricity from the alternator when the car is cruising under normal condition and most of that fuel was being used anyway, but it also uses re-regnerative energy from engine braking when slowing down, hence the fact that the real benefits are in urban driving, rather than flat speed expressway driving, since the motor boosts power and reduces fuel use when moving off, and is recharged when slowing back down to a stop.
Hybrids sure do show more efficiency in terms of petrol consumption in normal urban use, however whether overall more environmentally friendly given the engergy use in manufacturing the batteries / electric motors etc in the first place is another question.
Roll on fuel cell technology and mini nuclear fusion motors?