Traffic on expressways during the May 1–5 holiday was tallied at "holiday" levels. Some noted that a dilemma persists in which oil consumption keeps rising after the oil price ceiling system took effect.
According to the Korea Expressway Corporation (KEC) on the 7th, expressway traffic during the holiday was tallied at ▲5.92 million vehicles on the 1st ▲5.89 million on the 2nd ▲4.90 million on the 3rd ▲5.69 million on the 4th ▲5.00 million on the 5th. The five-day total reached 27.40 million vehicles, more than the 27.21 million recorded over the five days of the 2024 Lunar New Year holiday.
The average daily traffic during this holiday period (5.48 million vehicles) was also similar to the Lunar New Year and Chuseok holidays. It was higher than the 2024 Lunar New Year holiday (5.44 million), and close to the 2023 and 2024 Chuseok holidays (5.54 million and 5.55 million) and this year's Lunar New Year holiday (5.56 million).
The government analyzed that oil consumption increased week over week in the second, third, and fourth weeks of April, after the oil price ceiling system took effect. Deputy Minister Kang Gi-ryong of the Ministry of Economy and Finance said, "As the price ceiling has been maintained for a long period, it seems there is some degree of adaptation." The point was that there is concern that the price ceiling is not showing an effect in curbing oil consumption.
When the oil price ceiling system is implemented, the government must fiscally compensate refiners for the difference between international crude prices and domestic wholesale prices. As oil demand rises, the fiscal burden increases accordingly. The government has allocated 4.2 trillion won from the reserve fund to cover losses for six months of the price ceiling.
The government plans to announce the "5th oil price ceiling" at 7 p.m. A government official said, "We are also considering ways to operate the price ceiling system in a direction that can induce reduced consumption."
Meanwhile, analysts say the designation of Labor Day as a statutory holiday contributed to the expressway traffic during this holiday. On Workers' Day last year (Thursday, May 1), when only the private sector was off, traffic was 4.55 million vehicles, while on this year's Labor Day (Friday, May 1), it was 5.92 million. However, as the share of electric and hybrid vehicles grows, it cannot be said that gasoline and diesel consumption increases in proportion to the rise in expressway traffic.