CityLabEnvironment
Seoul's Answer to a Pollution Crisis: Free Public Transit
It’s a costly move that has only produced meager results in other cities. Could it bring real change to South Korea’s smog-choked capital?
When it comes to air pollution, China gets most of the attention as one of Asia’s worst offenders (and rightly so). But South Korea has a massive pollution problem all its own, earning the unenviable title of worst air quality among OECD nations—and experts predict the problem will only get worse over the next five years.
So when a thick layer of yellow dust settled over the city last week, local leaders took a drastic step to confront it: declaring an air quality emergency and, for the first time ever, giving commuters free rides on public transit.