Seoul Mayor Announces Vision for 'Bicycle Highways' | Be Korea-savvy

Seoul Mayor Announces Vision for ‘Bicycle Highways’


Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon explains his vision for CRT across Seoul during his visit to Bogota, Colombia, on July 14, 2019. (Yonhap)

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon explains his vision for CRT across Seoul during his visit to Bogota, Colombia, on July 14, 2019. (Yonhap)

BOGOTA, Jul. 14 (Korea Bizwire)The mayor of Seoul unveiled a plan Sunday to build bicycle-only roads throughout the South Korean capital city.

Mayor Park Won-soon declared his vision for the so-called Cycle Rapid Transit (CRT) for Seoul during his visit to Bogota, the capital of Colombia, which boasts one of the world’s most extensive networks of car-free roads packed with cyclists.

Park named his vision for an urban network of bicycle-only main roads named CRT after the existing Bus Rapid Transit, a high-quality bus-based transit system.

Park, who left Seoul last Monday for a 10-day trip to Mexico and Colombia, said he drew inspiration for CRT from Bogota’s “ciclovia” touted as one of the world’s most successful permanent bike paths.

“I’ll create a people-centered bike revolution by building bicycle highways throughout Seoul,” Park told reporters during a tour of ciclovia.

“The existing bike paths are an unstable space that adjoins car roadways. But the CRT will be physically separated from cars and pedestrians. It’s a space exclusively dedicated to bikes,” the mayor said.

Noting bike-only roads now exist from east to west along the Han River parks, Park said he will build north-south CRT networks to ensure smoother flows of bicycle traffic.

He said CRT networks will be built above bus-only lanes or along Han River bridges or other existing urban facilities in tubes or other forms.

The existing bike-only lanes on major car roadways will be elevated to the level of sidewalks.

Park’s government will also build 72 kilometers of bike-only roads in new urban development districts, like Magok, Wirye and Godeok-Gangil.

“Bicycle-centered and human-centered traffic is a big vision and movement across the world,” the mayor said. “We don’t have to hesitate, as the definition of human-oriented roads has been made clear.”

(Yonhap)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>