Bendy Buses * S. Korea - Debacle plagues Seoul
After four years of flagging operations, the Seoul city government has decided to get rid of 20 articulated buses, admitting that spending millions of dollars on them was a blunder
Seoul,South Korea -Joong Ang Daily, by Shin June-bong/Ser Myo-ja -November 27, 2008: -- ... As a part of public transport reforms in July 2004, the Seoul Metropolitan Government introduced 20 bendy buses from an Italian company called Iveco. The 18-meter-long vehicles have space for 140 passengers, nearly twice the capacity of a regular 10-meter-long bus.The purpose of introducing the articulated buses was to establish a bus-based rapid transit system using bus-only lanes, in order to reduce the expense of constructing infrastructure for subways and commuter trains. Each articulated bus cost 560 million won ($378,865), and the Seoul city government provided a subsidy of 200 million won per bus. Four bus companies purchased five bendy buses each, making up the rest of the cost themselves... But the 11.2 billion won-worth of new buses soon became a pain for most of the companies who bought them. There were frequent accidents because drivers were not trained on how to use them, the bus operators said.They also complained that components were not supplied in time, so some buses that broke down had to be left out of commission for months... According to the Seoul city government’s report to the National Assembly, the 20 buses malfunctioned 412 times between January and August of this year alone, averaging 20.6 malfunctions per bus. During the same period, regular buses reported an average of 8.8 problems... (Photo by Kim Do-hun - An articulated bus parked in a bus company yard in Sinnae-dong, northern Seoul yesterday)Labels: bendy buses
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