• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.71-81
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• 2012

The Korean government has actively accepted private investments in building expressways to improve its financial status. As of 2012, 422km of 9 private expressways are under operation, and until 2016 additional 15 are planned to be built with private investments. However, on average, each private expressway is at most 37km long, which works against economies of scale in maintenance and thus leads to inefficiencies such as traffic jams, driver inconveniences, and the increase in operating costs. To resolve these problems, the present study suggested that the maintenance and tolling system should be unified across each private operator. Unifying the operation of private expressways was expected to reduce user travel times and tolls, and save operator maintenance costs. These economic effects were expected to be tantamount to hundreds of billions of dollars. The shared toll collecting system will also reduce user's delays by removing main line tollgates. This can save another hundreds of billions of dollars by ensuring driver's convenience and safety.