earticle

영어

Korea’s bus transportation has been growing as an increase in the population led to an increase in need of transportation supply: the number of operating buses and the number of lines have been increasing continuously. Today, Korea’s Bus Transportation Business is divided into seven categories (cities, farming and fishing villages, cross-county, shuttles, chartered, and etc.) and operated separately. However, Bus Transportation Business is facing difficulties due to the expansions of subways and taxis, as well as the increasing number of private vehicles. In the beginning, bus transportations were privately operated in Korea, however, due to the problems caused by small-scale businesses’ low-level service and profitability-based bus lines, it has been decided to manage bus transportation publicly in certain sectors. Yet, fundamental limits hindered the bus transportation from operating publicly. Thus, most of the bus transportation system is under private ownerships. As stated above, private ownership resulted in constant deficit operation, which caused low-service quality. Furthermore, poor working conditions led to serious conflicts between labor and management. As a countermove, semi-public bus transportation system should be introduced. But, semi-public system cannot be a total solution for every problem because from the cities that already introduced public transportation system, we know that there are possible problems that could be caused. Despite this fact, we have to admit that public ownership of bus transportation is an easier way to stabilize current chaos in bus transportation business. It is because users, or bus transportation companies, cannot afford any more investment, and workers cannot involve in management either. Whereas financial support from the third party is in need, there’s no alternative plan. In the case of Korea, financial support from the third party basically means depending on central or local government. Therefore, introducing public bus transportation system is easily discussed to improve the management of bus transportation. However, for a successful operation of semi-public ownership of bus transportation, we cannot deny the importance of securing financial funds. Then, it might be a way for local governments with a low financial standing to find a solution from other than semi-public ownership of bus transportation. The reason is that the efficiency report on semi-public ownership of bus transportation proves that even some local governments with a good financial standing such as Dae-Jun reconsider to publicize bus transportation system, due to the increase in financial support on bus transportation system. This means that it might be difficult for the increase in local governments’ financial profit to catch up with the increase in the size of financial support for bus transportation system. Considering the problems that could be caused by semi-public ownership of bus transportation system, it is necessary for local governments with a low financial standing to examine other bus transportation management systems such as new lines, non-profit lines, returning lines, and lines bidding system. We should not forget that such public-private joint systems as profit joint control system and lines bidding system are implemented and used in all over the world (this means such bus management systems could be reconsidered as an alternative plan). Lastly, the constitution and legal provisions should be adequately reviewed for the improvement of bus transportation companies’ rational management.