Seoul Buses Reorganize Routes, Finance, and Publicity

The Seoul Metropolitan Government will completely innovate bus routes, publicity, and finances to mark the 20th anniversary of the city bus semi-public system.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced three innovation tasks, saying that it has implemented the world's best transportation welfare through the bus semi-public system, but that problems to solve, such as excessive financial burden, damage to publicity caused by private capital inflows, and supplier-oriented routes, have also increased.

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon emphasized that first, we will eliminate routes that overlap with other transportation methods or long-distance routes, use self-driving buses at dawn and late at night, and "demand-response transportation" will be used in places with many elderly people or near social welfare facilities so that "anyone can access public transportation within five minutes on foot."

For fiscal innovation, the government decided to introduce a "pre-confirmation system" that estimates the total income and total cost next year and pays the difference instead of the "post settlement system" that compensated for the entire transportation deficit, and set a cap on labor and fuel costs.

In addition, it said it will introduce a pre-examination system if private capital such as private equity funds acquire bus companies to maintain bus publicity and revise the ordinance to ban foreign capital and asset management companies within this year.

For private capital that has already entered, he stressed that if excessive dividend income and corporate bond issuance are suppressed and net assets such as garage are sold, no rent will be paid, and if they are re-sold within five years of entry, they will effectively prevent future bus operations from being able to "eat and run."