In Which I Advise the Minister of Construction
by Brendon Carr
Okay, not really. But in actual fact, a number of Korean think-tanks apparently follow my posts on housing (according to my referrer logs), and now we have the Ministry of Construction and Transportation looking here. The Dong-A Ilbo English edition today reports the Lee Myung-bak government’s response to the housing crisis: Do what Korea Law Blog recommends.
In my blog entries on this topic, I’ve urged the government to deregulate land-use restrictions to increase the supply of developable land:
The government decided to lift regulations on farmlands and mountain lands in suburban areas to expand the ratio of the urban land to the entire territory from 6.2 percent to 9.2 percent by 2020. This widens the urban area by 1.5 folds nationwide. The expanded area is five times larger than Seoul....
The government will also drastically reduce some 390 overlapping regulations in land usage.
And to allow more intensive use of existing land in the areas where there is high demand:
Under the draft plan, the ministry will expand the supply of houses in areas near subway stations in cities by raising the floor space index, and allow the construction of skyscrapers in which hotels and apartments coexist in special economic zones.
The article is interesting, in that it also reports the government making government-owned land available for housing development, in order that the land-cost component of new housing might be reduced. Because the Ministry of Construction and Transportation also plans for transportation, the article reports plans to extend bus-only lanes in the densely-populated Seoul-Suwon-Pyongtaek urbanized corridor down the Seoul-Pusan Expressway.
Since I suspect transport grandees might also be reading Korea Law Blog, at this time I’d like to highlight another infrastructure-investment suggestion for The Bulldozer to consider: Express trains on the subway, to make longer-distance commuting more bearable for the folks who live in Seoul and commute across the city. Currently, all the existing subway lines (Lines 1-8) have just two tracks, which means that no express service is possible. Line 9, currently under construction, is being built to accommodate express services. Why not dig up the existing subways and make express service possible on the key lines? Line 1 and Line 2 would be a great start.
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So, any thoughts on why Korea and Seoul have been so bad at the transportation half of the Ministry of Construction and Transportation?
As you said, no express lines on the subways. I don’t think line No. 2 needs them so much… but Lines 1, 3 and 4 all could (since they are more commuter lines). Line 5, too, I guess.
Hong Kong has a great train line to its airport, but Incheon’s train still is under construction… and even when it is done, it will take 50 minutes or so to get to Yongsan Station.
I wonder how beneficial it would be for Seoul if the government introduced commuter laws like in Tokyo—all employers have to pay for their employees’ commutes, but with high-speed lines bringing people in from much further out, faster.