Road pricing was introduced to South Korea in 1969 by the Korean Highway Corporation, and is now a well established manner of financing the construction and maintenance of the inter-urban road network. Currently in operation there are about 120 toll stations on the 1,800 km of Korean highways. The existing road pricing system is manually operated with (primarily) a closed tolling policy; charging is based on distance travelled and vehicle class (of which there are 5 categories). The system operates based on magnetic cards containing details of the entry point and payment may be made with either cash or a pre-paid card. The current system, supplied by Samsung Electronics Company, has been operating with considerable success since 1992, however inevitably at peak times toll plazas can represent a significant bottleneck to the road network. Electronic Toll Collection is being investigated from two related but distinct avenues. The first is the proposed introduction of this technology as a gradual replacement of the existing manual tolling applications for payment of inter-urban travel; the second area of investigation is the application of the technology for congestion pricing (using charging for access as a means to manage demand). These two roles are aimed principally to improve traffic flow and manage demand within the city centres.
Abstract