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Enhancing Transit Service using Bus Information System (BIS)
Transportation Policy Division, Ulsan Metropolitan Government

A. Problem Analysis

 1. What was the problem before the implementation of the initiative?
As of 2013, bus system, privately owned and only public transit option in Ulsan, serves 1.17 million residents, covering an area of over 1,060 km2 with 652 regular buses and 89 shuttle buses. It has an extensive network composed of 98 regular routes and 40 shuttle routes. Once renowned with its poor service quality, it now becomes something to brag about thanks to full-operation of Bus Information System (BIS) initiative since 2005. Before the BIS initiative, bus services were mostly random and unreliable. Users did not know where and when to board the desired bus, and operators were not able to manage its operation and dispatch vehicles efficiently. There were no such information mechanism given to the public and the operators. Buses were therefore the last option for citizens to choose. The initiative has successfully changed this situation: from the primitive and bad services to the fast and convenient ones. Since the early 1960s, Ulsan has been the powerhouse of Korean economy called as “an industrial capital city of Korea”. Rapid urbanization and unprecedented industrialization brought sharp increase in both car ownership and road traffic. Specifically, Ulsan encountered 7 percent of annual increase in car ownership and 5.9 percent of traffic volume annually since designated as a "Metropolitan City" in 1997. These created two critical problems in managing the city. First, in spite of tremendous efforts to expand road and parking infrastructures, excessive auto dependency resulted in ever-increasing road traffic, leading to inefficiencies throughout the entire transport system. Chronic congestion became citizens’ daily life, resulting in increased travel time/cost, deteriorated environments and ultimately negative impacts on the quality of life. Secondly, private bus companies were also victimized: losing passengers/ revenues, and increasing operating costs resulted from the worsened road conditions everywhere. Aggravated financial problem naturally led to the reduced quantity as well as deteriorated quality of bus service. In other words, the bus companies by themselves were not able to maintain the good quality of service. As a result, more and more citizens relied on autos, again leading to the reduced bus passengers/revenues. Ulsan was therefore caught at the typical “vicious cycle of urban transportation” situation. The nature of urban transportation sector in Ulsan was unique when compared with other Korean major cities. First, local industries such as petrochemical, shipyard and automobile generated so much traffic that the city was encountering serious daily congestion. Secondly, the bus network should cover the extensive administrative boundary, the largest among seven major Korean cities. The provision of good quality of services was thus an inherently difficult task, in particular for city’s peripheral areas where relatively low-income households reside. Moreover, the main bus user group, such as children, students, women, and elderly, and other non-car users, were seriously affected by the declining service quality. Under these circumstances, city leaders were forced to seek a policy alternative to end the “vicious cycle of urban transportation” by enhancing the quality of bus service and thus promoting the use of bus system.

B. Strategic Approach

 2. What was the solution?
Transportation Policy Division (TPD) in Ulsan Metropolitan Government recognized the need for finding a way to terminate the vicious cycle of urban transportation. Though there are plenty of strategies that help ending the cycle, the TPD selected the strategy belonging to the transit service quality category: the real-time dynamic transit information and management systems. TPD thus proposed Bus Information System (BIS) with the following two specific goals: (a) increasing bus ridership and (b) improve user satisfaction. This BIS initiative was set to improve the quality of bus services, hoping to encourage citizens to shift from autos to buses, and to enhance over-all efficiencies of urban transport sector through the modal shift. Its target population was by its very nature the general public, including bus users as well as potential users, in particular helping the main user group – students, women, elderly, low-incomers, and other non-auto users. The term Bus Information System (BIS) refers to use of electronic, information, communication and computer technologies to assist service providers in raising service level and operational efficiency. The system can help the public acquire accurately and efficiently the information of the bus movement (routes, locations, arrival times) and facilitate the user to plan their travel route before taking a bus. Further, it can help operators to improve fleet management and thus enhance the operational efficiency. With the improved convenience, safety, reliability and productivity, the quality of service can be substantially improved, leading to the modal shift along with the accomplished social equity, environmental performance and network operation resilience. The BIS initiative started with the adoption of "Intelligent Transportation System (ITS)" concept in the late 1990s. Based on the enacted bill on "Optimization of Transportation System", the city government established a comprehensive ITS plan in 2000. While the plan designates five target areas (transportation management, electronic payment, urban traffic information, tourist information, and bus information system), special attention was given on the BIS as a means to raise urban transport efficiency and the quality of bus services at the same time. The BIS allows Ulsan Traffic Management Center (TMC) in charge of control and manage of all ITS components to be able to collect a variety of data and information necessary for identifying the real-time dynamic bus movement. The collected data and information are then analyzed and disseminated to the end users to query: all station's bus information terminals (BIT) and various media (WEB, WAP, Mobile APP etc.). The BIS also allows the TMC to monitor and manage the operation of buses in a real-time basis, improving the schedule adherence and eliminating the unstable and irregular services. It has particularly contributed to the provision of improved services not just for the main user groups as described but also for residents at the peripheries of the city where the very limited numbers of bus lines were in operation. For various reasons, the BIS initiative has so far been considered as an absolute success. The system has been thus continually upgraded and refined over last 8 years. Various surveys showed that the citizens’ satisfaction on the bus services has been increasing year by year. Bus passengers have been increasing, so have been bus revenues. The modal shift from autos to buses has been also remarkable, helping mitigating congestion problem. Overall efficiency of Ulsan transport system has been mounting, helping to deliver the city’s main vision, “Sustainable Development toward Eco-City Ulsan”, letting alone help ending the vicious cycle.
 3. How did the initiative solve the problem and improve people’s lives?
As the term BIS indicates, the initiative inherently utilizes the state-of-art information and communication technologies (ICT). In early 2000, when the project was initiated, BIS development was in a conceptual stage so that actual system building and operation was a daunting task for civil servants involved in the project. Further, there were no applicable benchmarking cases. Most of system development process thus should be innovative and creative, in the sense that no previous method and knowledge existed. Another innovative feature of this initiative lied in the changed institutional and organizational arrangements. Implementing a complex and high-tech project like the BIS requires a consensus and support of various stakeholders with different interests as well as a great variety of expertise and responsibilities. To deal with the above problems, the city decided to restructure the conventional institutional approach at outset by (a) introducing a new expert organization (as a temporary task force) (b) establishing a public-private partnership (PPP) integrating all the stakeholders. The expert task force consisted of not just internally selected officials but also newly hired transport and ICT specialists. A steering committee consisting of all the stakeholders was also organized to create the concerted coordination among them.

C. Execution and Implementation

 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
When the city deployed Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) project supported by central government in 2001, BIS was one of the five sub-projects. The entire ITS project, including the BIS, was implemented via a turnkey project performed by the private sectors selected from a bidding process. The overall scope of the project consisted of design, construction, development, testing, installation, training, operation of each sub-project. The BIS initiative began with developing a comprehensive strategic master plan, consisting of four phases with special attention on target areas and policy priority: (a) decision-making phase, (b) development phase, (c) operation phase, (d) expansion phase. The first phase (2001-2002) started with the establishment of a task force team consisting of transport experts and related civil servants. The team scrutinized the needs and feasibility of the BIS initiative by performing several pre-surveys. Based on the findings, an action plan was worked out, which included rearrangement of locations of stop/station and initial design for key hardware components, such as BIS information network, bus information terminal (BIT) and vehicle on-board units (OBU). To pull out consensus and cooperation from all the key stakeholders at various levels, numerous public hearings, community meetings and exhibitions took place and a steering committee was organized. The second phase (2003) involved construction, equipment installation, training and organizational arrangements. There were two key strategies to ensure the successful development in this phase: (a) Construct Traffic Management Center (TMC). (b) Establish institutional arrangements among various levels of governments, public institutions (e.g. police, road authority) along with developing the public-private partnership (PPP) among private bus companies, NGOs, community leaders, experts and ICT companies. (c) Establish the entire BIS framework, i.e., a system of data collection, processing, analysis and dissemination. This phase also focused on personnel training and education, hoping to change management skills, work process, mindset, and tools. The third phase (2004-2005) covered periods of testing and initial full-operation, after the system was completed. The key strategies in this phase included: (a) Develop manuals of system operation and evaluation, (b) Establish internal supervising & monitoring and reporting systems, (c) Work out a long-term refinement and expansion action plan (2006-2015). In particular, to secure the overall system transparency through the rigorous evaluation and monitoring of progress and activities, internal supervision and periodic reporting systems were launched. On April 1st 2005, the BIS initiative started to fully operate, actually beginning the fourth phase (2006-present). Based on the created action plan, this phase focuses predominantly on the further system expansion and refinement along with the replacements of old components and introducing new services. Some of developments were achieved earlier than originally planned time. Key developments so far in this phase can be summarized as followings: - Extending BIS service to the remaining bus routes, express bus routes (2011), shuttle bus routes (2012) - Upgrade hardware/software components and equipment - Extended BIS to mobile phones: Automatic Response Service (ARS) and Short Message Service (SMS) (2007) - Established multi-regional BIS via coordinated efforts with a neighbor city (Yangsan City) funded by the central government (2008) - Introduced various mobile applications: Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) (2011) IOS (2011), Quick Response Code(2011) Android (2012) - Upgraded the telecommunication medium from TRS to CDMA to augment the capacity, speed and reliability of network (2011) - Introduced blogs on twitter, facebook and me2day (2012) - Upgraded mobile application: design, speed, user-oriented functions and menus (2013).
 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
The stakeholders involved in BIS initiative are numerous, and each stakeholder has played a distinctive role in the system design and implementation. The Transport Policy Division originally proposed the initiative was responsible for the entire system development and operation, while private sectors, such as owners of bus companies, labor union, ICT companies are also responsible for design and operation of the system. There are also other public organizations involved, such as local police, public road authorities, and neighbor city authorities. Most important stakeholders are the general public, including bus users, represented by NGOs and each community. The city government customized the contents of national ITS plan relevant for the characteristics of local transportation sector and implemented the BIS programs with special attention on policy priority. The bus companies invested a good deal of financial resource in the renovation of vehicles and facilities, along with the invention of modified fleet management and dispatch schemes. Bus Labor Union leaders also agreed to work with the altering schemes after numerous meetings with the concerned civil servants. ICT companies not just provided their expertise and technologies with reasonable prices, but also eagerly participated in the adjustment and maintenance process with their own resources, hoping to store up their technical expertise and knowledge. All of these so far result in easing the city’s financial obligation significantly. Local police and road authorities have been involved in the construction and operation phases whenever necessary (e.g. accidents, changes in signal operation and pavement markings, etc.). Representatives of NGOs, communities and local industries participated in numerous committee meetings to express their opinions and needs. In particular, local industries showed particular interests in the BIS initiative, hoping alleviating their burdens of providing transport service and parking for employees.
 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
The BIS initiative inherently involved not just financial resources but also a great deal of human and technical resources, requirements of which were varied by the project phases. For the 1st and 2nd phases, most financial resources were allocated to the construction, design and installation of hardware and software components. Human and technical resources were readily mobilized by organizing a temporary task force team. The team consisted of newly hired specialists in such field as transport, electricity, communication, geographic information system (GIS) and a certified accountant. And it also included internally selected general administers, civil engineers and project managers. The 3rd phase focused mostly on mobilizing technical resources, since this phase worked on testing, evaluating and operating the developed system. The most help came from the private sectors: telecommunication, IT & hardware/software and bus companies. This 3rd phase also required mobilizing the experts and specialists to develop a long-term comprehensive BIS action plan. This plan includes not just for future system expansion and renovation plan, but also technical and financial plan. The on-going 4th phase has focused on mobilizing all of resources according to the action plan previously developed. To meet the increasing demand for human and technical resources, the temporary task force team has been upgraded to an official branch in the Transport Policy Division, and the specialists and experts in the branch increased from 4 to 12 persons as the system is evolving and expanding. The initial deployment of BIS cost a total of about 3.0 billion Korean Won (approx. 3.8 million US dollar), including construction cost of the TMC. One fourth of the total came from the central government and the rest was shared by the city government, bus companies and participating ICT companies. Although the city government has been primarily responsible for the on-going 4th phase funding, it has exerted serious efforts to diversify funding sources so as to secure stable and adequate funding. In fact the sources of funding become diverse as the project proceeds: the central government, neighbor city, Telecom & IT companies. As a result, the city can continue the project with the reasonably contained internal resources. One of successful funding sources was the central and other local governments. A half of the cost for building multi-regional BIS in 2008 was funded by the subsidy from the central government and another half from neighbor city (Yangsan). Another source has been the private sector’s contribution. Korea Telecom (KT) and SK Telecom, two of the biggest mobile companies in Korea, installed “On-vehicle Free Wi-Fi” services with their own financial resources. And private bus companies are responsible for continual revamping of vehicles and stop/station facilities.
 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
It can be pointed out that an ultimate goal of the BIS initiative is to achieve Ulsan’s long-term vision “Sustainable Eco-City”. And the Transport Policy Division’s initial goal is to terminate the vicious cycle of urban transportation. While there have been numerous achievements and benefits, key outputs that have contributed to the achievement of the vision and goal can be summarized as follows. - Improved quality of bus services and resulting ridership increase: Enhanced quality of bus services with respect to its convenience, on-time performance, reliability etc. resulted in the increasing passengers. Before its implementation, number of bus passengers decreased at an average rate of 1.43% per year. After its full-operation from 2006 to 2012 the number increased at an annual average rate of 1.99%. This leads to mitigate the congestion, increasing overall efficiencies and sustainability of urban transport sector as well as ending the vicious cycle. - Creation of expert organization: From its very beginning stage, government officials realized a lack of expertise dealing with such a complex and high-tech system. Thus an organization arrangement was temporarily made to establish a task force team with full of newly hired experts. The temporary task force team has been upgraded to the official division level. The city now has an internal expertized organization. - Strengthened partnerships among the stakeholders: The initiative was never implemented without the dedicated and coordinated efforts by all relevant stakeholders. The steering committee consisting of all affected parties played a major role in this. Thru numerous official and non-official meetings, each stakeholder successfully played given role. For example, Ulsan Bus Association and Bus Labor Union, would-be the biggest affected parties, are now the biggest supporters of the BIS. - Becoming a model city: Ulsan became a model city of successful BIS operation. The Traffic Management Center (TMC) becomes a must-visit and bench-marking BIS place for both domestic and international experts and government officials. Until 2012, a total of 655 institutions and 22,736 people visited the TMC, including 28 countries and 244 foreigners. The number of visitors and countries has been incessantly increasing since the operation of BIS in 2005. - Award given as a recognition for successful public service: Ulsan was awarded “2012 Grand Prize of Public Service” by the Korean Association of Intelligent Transport Studies, as a recognition of successful practical application of advanced ICT for enhancing public services.
 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
By its very nature, the BIS operation has been monitored continuously by the general public, news media as well as bus users. For example, in the case of the system malfunction, user makes a direct call to the Traffic Management Center (TMC) or leaves a message on the WEB board/blog to notify the problem. Local newspapers and TV stations also are sources of constant monitoring. In addition, since most of funding for the system development and operation comes from the taxpayer’s money, BIS has always been one of target issues to which the city council members as well as NGOs pay their particular attention. They regularly scrutinize and examine the progress and activities of the BIS. On the other hand, the Traffic Management Center (TMC) monitors and evaluates the private sector’s activities and progress in a real-time basis. The bus operation, such as scheduled time adherences, headway control, on-time performance, fare collection, vehicle dispatch and so on, is constantly monitored and supervised. Every company should also submit the report whenever the TMC requests. For the evaluation of the system’s overall performance, the city government utilizes three tools. First, “Bus Transit Performance and Service Evaluation” is conducted annually according to national law “Act for Promotion of Support and Utilization for Public Transit”. This includes evaluation and assessment of funding, strategies and activities according to the established action plan. Secondly, an annual questionnaire survey is conducted to identify the public/user perceptions and satisfaction on the over-all quality of bus service. The third tool includes annual traffic survey and cost-effective analyses to identify the over-all performance and efficiencies of the initiative. Internally, Transport Policy Division sets up the monitoring system for on-going process and organizes the maintenance/management team on a daily basis. When the unusual case or malfunctioning occurs, emergency task force will be dispatched and correct the problem. All these incidents are summarized and reported on daily, weekly, monthly and annual bases. The Division also reports all relevant progress and activities to the steering committee on a regular basis, receiving the inputs from the committee. In particular, when major changes in system or operation take place, public hearings or community meetings are held. On the other hand, information for minor changes is posted on WEB board/blog or newspapers.
 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
Over the system development and implementation phase, there encountered several problems. They can be summarized as followings: - Financial burden: From the initial stage up to present time, this problem has been periodically addressed by City Council, media and NGOs, concerned that the project could cause a financial trouble to the city. - Complexity of the initiative: City and participating private sectors realized that building and operating new unique system using high-tech ICT with so many stakeholders was absolutely not an easy task. It required changes in management, organizational structure, mindset, as well as new skills, tools and knowledge. - Countless opposition from the affected stakeholders: Some of city council members and NGOs did not have confidence in the project’s projected cost-effectiveness expressed in the action plan. Also Bus Labor Union considered BIS as “Big Brother”, monitoring and supervising their behaviors constantly. - Real-world situation: Many of the system concepts and designs could not be easily applied to the real-world conditions. And thus endless modifications in the original plan were required over the entire implementation process. To deal with the above problems, the city organized a special task-force team consisting of local bus companies as well as newly hired transport and ICT specialists. After the system operation, the funding problem was automatically resolved by the public’s strong support for the initiative. The greatest challenge was to drag out consensus from the affected population as well as the public-at-large. For this a steering committee consisting of all the stakeholders integrated their inputs and opinions into the implementation process. The original system concepts and designs had been endlessly scrutinized by the task force team, and they were persistently changed and modified whenever necessary. All these efforts together helped to resolve a majority of BIS-related problems addressed above.

D. Impact and Sustainability

 10. What were the key benefits resulting from this initiative?
The deployment of a big public project like the BIS initiative are expected not just to resolve the issues and problems but also to generate various benefits to all the affected stakeholders. The successes and key benefits of BIS initiated in Ulsan can be identified from a few quantitative indicators as followings. - User benefits: Up to year 2012, the accumulated economic benefits inherited from the reduced bus passenger travel time are estimated to 105 billion Korean Won (approx. 100 mil. US dollar) in net present value (NPV), equivalent to 6.94 in the ratio of benefit/cost (B/C). - Enhanced traffic condition: The general peak-time traffic speed hour increased by 7.0Km/hr (25.4%) between 2004 and 2012 due to the increased bus passengers via modal shift from autos to buses. The economic benefit inherited from the diminished travel time is estimated to 381 billion Korean Won (approx. 363 mil. US dollar) in net present value (NPV), equivalent to 7.58 in the ratio of benefit/cost (B/C). - Enhanced bus services: A 2012 survey of satisfaction on the BIS itself and the quality of bus services found that the general public’s perceptions, including those of passengers, are very positive. For example, bus route information system recorded at 4.47 points out of 5 points, while service reliability reached at 4.75 points. This numbers have been going-up every year since 2004. - Enhanced information accessibility: Due to the diverse means for the provision of bus service information, the number of uses of bus information increased from 9,916,371 in 2008 to 73,951,520 in 2012. - Easier administration of public bus system: As a result of the enhanced service quality, the number of complaints against bus services in 2011 has drastically decreased by 71 percent compared to the number in 2004. There are also several significant non-quantifiable benefits realized from the BIS initiative. - Reduced investment for road/parking infrastructure: Significant modal shift from autos to buses facilitates the efforts to control traffic congestion and reduces the needs for new road/parking facilities, saving the public moneys. Before the BIS full-operation, traffic volume increased at an annual average rate of 5.9%. Since then up to 2012, the rate became 4.0% while an average peak-hour speed on the roads increased by 5.1kph over the same period. This means that the transport system in Ulsan becomes more resource-efficient and environmentally friendlier, meaning that it becomes more sustainable. - Contributions to achieve the city’s vision: The successful implementation of the initiative helps the city to achieve its main vision and goal: “achieving sustainable Eco-City Ulsan” and “terminating vicious cycle of urban transportation”. This is the reason why leaders in the city government continue to invest in the on-going long-term BIS project. - Enhanced administrative responsiveness: Introduction of WEB and mobile-based, that is, initiation of e-services has led to reduced service response time from government officials. In particular, openings of online blogs on the major portals (twitter, facebook, me2day) have contributed to not just the further reduction but also the accessibility of users and citizens to the bus information. - Changes in overall character of Ulsan: There have been changes in entire scenery of Ulsan: its competitiveness, citizens’ lifestyle and even its appearance. Moreover, it helps change its reputation from the dirty and smoked Industrial-oriented to Eco-friendly and convenient community. - Acquired new technical knowledge: The BIS initiative utilizes the state-of-art information and communication technologies and requires constant updates of the system as the related technologies advance. As a result of over 10-year implementation, the government officials now have the ability to understand and use such technologies. - Promoted equity and improved access for the handicapped and disadvantaged population: The initiative inherently improves the services for the vulnerable population, e.g. the low-income, students, women, the youth and elderly who are the main users of the public bus system. In addition, since 2009 all of bus information terminals (BIT) have been equipped with the visual and hearing impairment devices, and also the voice function for the visual impairment population has been available even on the WEB information system.
 11. Did the initiative improve integrity and/or accountability in public service? (If applicable)
The BIS initiative is obviously sustainable, mostly thanks to the strong public support, and it is also easily transferable to other cities, considering the fact that the BIS has been in operation almost 8 years without encountering any serious problems. It is sustainable in most senses. From an economic point of view, the initiative can be implemented with the contained investment, and it generates much greater benefits than costs involved. For these reasons, it has been sustained mostly by internal resources. Additional important factor in this has been collaboration with the private sectors and public institutions, including the central government. As time goes by, more and more resources necessary for the system expansion and refinement has come from diverse sources. The initiative has received much recognition from the general public and NGOs, yet above all from customers of bus system. This has been confirmed by results of annual survey investigating the satisfaction about the quality of bus service. Customers constantly express their appreciations on the WEB blogs/boards. Because of these satisfactory responses from customers, elected officials have been also in favor of the initiative and have thus been generous in the BIS funding. The temporary task force team became an official branch in the Transport Policy Division, maintaining the enlarged manpower and specialists. It also has been a subject of scholarly research on its achievements and benefits accumulated as public service (presented/published at 10th (2004 Nagoya) and 17th (2010 Busan) ITS World Congresses, and 2011 the 2nd International Public Transportation Forum in Seoul), and received “2012 Grand Prize of Public Service Award from the Korean Association of Intelligent Transport Studies”. Most importantly, the public’s support and love for the BIS has been a main power injector for city to continue and expand the initiative. This successful BIS initiative can readily be a model for all cities interested in deploying similar projects, though it is hard to say that the initiative is relevant for all cities over the world. Yet, it would be a good practice of urban transportation sector to the cities where the growing demand of effective transportation is urgently required with only limited financial resource at local level. In this sense, it is already confirmed that Ulsan's BIS initiative attracts great attentions from policy-makers at both national and international level in terms of the possible replication in urban transportation sector. From 2005 to 2012, a total of 655 institutes and 22,881 people visited the TMC to learn how to develop and operate the BIS, including overseas visitors from 28 countries. Recently, Basra Province, Iraq, invited Ulsan city officials to intend to replicate the Ulsan initiative in their cities. Interestingly, the number of visitors has been increased year by year. Presently the city is considering the expansion of the visitor facilities and plans to sharpen the multi-language field-trip and educational programs to accommodate the increased international demand.
 12. Were special measures put in place to ensure that the initiative benefits women and girls and improves the situation of the poorest and most vulnerable? (If applicable)
The experiences from the BIS initiative provide significant implications of urban transportation sector. The first policy implication is that it would be more practical policy option that leads to the increasing efficiency of transportation sector without spending the tax-payer’s money for expanding road/parking infrastructure. Such a supply-led approach is unlikely to be a good alternative to many developing cities that experience serious fiscal deficits. In this sense, the role of BIS must be emphasized to developing cities where the existing infrastructure is no longer capable of absorbing rapid increase in auto uses. The other implication in the transportation sector is that the integration of fragmented advanced information technologies into a single transport system project to a significant extent can contribute to increase the efficiency of urban traffic flow. Besides, the success of the initiative is an excellent example of how a complex public project can be implemented in an integrated way to improve the quality of public services and at the same time to achieve the city’s vision. In this regard, followings are the key lessons which one can learn from the results of this initiative: - Decisive commitment and political will: The project required significant initial financial and human resources, and further investments for continuous operation and expansion are also need. Also there were various internal and external parties with different interests as well as a great deal of responsibilities. Under these circumstances, it would be impossible to implement and continue the project without a strong commitment and political will from leaders, harmonizing the conflicts among all of these parties as well as securing resource requirements. - Strengthened confidence of civil servants: BIS is an integrated platform providing real-time dynamic information based on the state-of-art and complex technic and knowledge, which turned out to be resulted in the enhanced quality of public service, increased efficiencies as well as reduced cost for all stakeholders. By overcoming such complexity and acquiring the countless benefits, civil servants can build-up their confidence in challenging and implementing other complex initiatives with ease. - Evolving Approach Framework: As internal and external circumstances change, methods of approach should evolve to avoid the risk of not accomplishing the desired goal. The success of this project is mainly attributed to the determined leadership to approach the project with a structured evolving process powered by transport and IT specialist and with the constant evaluation of the implementation process. - Changing public’s attitude thru improved public service: As the society advances in socio-economic sense, citizens naturally expect the better quality of public services. When government acts promptly to meet these expectations, citizens also change their attitudes. The speedy-processed BIS initiative has been one outstanding proof showing that raising level of transit service can change the travel behavior and patterns of the general public, helping city to manage the urban transportation sector more effectively.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Transportation Policy Division, Ulsan Metropolitan Government
Institution Type:   Government Department  
Contact Person:   Chae-yun Lim
Title:   Assistant Project Manager  
Telephone/ Fax:   82-52-229-4275
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   mia0010@korea.kr  
Address:   201, Jungang-ro
Postal Code:   201, Jungang-ro
City:   Nam-gu
State/Province:   Ulsan Metropolitan City
Country:  

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