Traffic in Korea is notoriously horrid in the days leading up to Lunar New Year, when millions of Koreans hit the road to visit family and ancestral homes, but if it¡¯s any consolation for the drivers stuck in hours-long traffic, forecasters are getting better at predicting conditions on the road, thanks to big data.
¡°A 6-hour, 20-minute drive is expected from Seoul to Gwangju,¡± traffic forecaster Kim Soo-hee at the Korea Expressway Corporation, which runs the nation¡¯s toll roads, reported on Jan. 26, just a day before the holiday. His prediction was close to the actual time it took that day: 6 hours and 30 minutes, an accuracy of 97 percent.
¡°Expect to drive five hours from Busan to Seoul,¡± said another forecaster Park Ji-hyun on Jan. 28, in the midst of the four-day holiday. Park¡¯s prediction was 95.7 percent accurate; drivers ended up spending 4 hours and 47 minutes in traffic.
The Korea Expressway Corporation publishes live traffic information on its website, roadplus.co.kr, but what¡¯s most impressive is how far in advance it can forecast road conditions. Maps and graphs displaying traffic predictions on the nation¡¯s highways during Lunar New Year were already up by mid-January, weeks before the holiday began. Maps with roads colored in green, yellow and red displayed congestion level by the hour. A bar graph showed expected driving hours between major cities like Seoul and Busan by taking into account the average time it took for cars to reach each tollgate.
With the bevy of navigation apps and traffic condition reports available to drivers, many may take these forecasts for granted. But it was only less than 10 years ago that the idea of traffic forecasting came into being, a science that was made possible through improvements in big data analysis.
¡°After the chaotic congestion during the Chuseok [Mid-Autumn Festival] holiday in 2007, we started building up a system to support traffic forecasts and began the service in 2008,¡± said Namkoong Seong, director of transport research at the Korea Expressway Corporation and the first traffic forecaster in Korea. ¡°What drivers want to know is not traffic information of the past or even right now. They want to know about future traffic situations they will actually find themselves in.¡± Before 2008, the corporation delivered only real-time traffic data. For example, it could only say how many hours it took for a car that already arrived in Busan to get from Seoul.
Now, the corporation is able to make predictions. It collects data from over 300 tollgates, which record the type of car and time of passage through each gate. Vehicle detection systems, which measure car speed and traffic levels, have been installed every 1 to 2 kilometers (0.6 to 1.2 miles), covering roughly 4,000 kilometers. All this information is sent to the corporation¡¯s traffic information center and research institute for analysis.
The highway company installed 88 sales counters at highway resting areas and 14 food lorries at so-called ¡°Sleepy Resting Places¡± to 360 youths who wanted to start a business of their own. They were able to test their business ideas at the resting places where many people stopped to take a break. When successful, they secured seed money to kick off their businesses.
The Hannam Dream Reststop located in the capital area, which is one of the busiest resting area in the country, has been used as a cluster for youth start-ups. Twelve sales counters were occupied by young people so they could kick off their start-up operations, while another seven were used for education and practice sessions.
The highway company plans to establish up to 100 more places for youth to start their businesses and ultimately to turn irregular employees to regular ones, in line with the government mission to phase out discriminatory practices in personnel matters.
The company said it is especially proud of the achievement as it came as a result of the employees working together for the same goal amid tough times due to debt reductions and cuts in the SOC investments over the past three years. They will continue to work hard so that the KEC continues to stick to its position as the representative brand to provide top-level service for the people.