Bimodal Tram and Its Role in the Public Transportation System

The public transportation in operation or to be planned domestically includes subway, LRT, bimodal tram and bus, which are independently characterized in their passenger capacity and cost. High quality service is generally accompanied by high cost of construction and operation. Thus, ITS, BIS/BMS and BRT system are recently introduced to provide high quality service to the passengers with the cost as low as possible. The bimodal tram is under development to achieve such goals in public transportation. The carrying capacity is approximately expected to be 5,000~18,000 persons/hour and the construction cost to be 10~30 billion Korean won/km. It is possible to construct the infrastructure gradually depending on the demand of transportation and the planned route, which can effectively reduce the initial cost to launch the service. The bimodal tram is developed to provide the advantages of subway and bus to the passengers like on-time performance and flexibility of the lines.