Daejeon is accelerating the adoption of "three-car articulated vehicles," the first in Korea. As a large-capacity mode that can carry 230 people per vehicle, the city conducted a joint inspection on the 27th to review road suitability and safety, aiming to begin official service in Oct.
The three-car articulated vehicle connects three train cars or buses into one and is also called a "trackless tram (TRT; Trackless Rapid Transit)" or a "triple-articulated bus." Its exterior resembles a tram, but it has rubber tires, allowing it to travel on regular roads without tracks. Each vehicle carries about 230 people, roughly four times that of a standard city bus.
Daejeon is pushing to introduce the vehicles to ease chronic traffic congestion and fill gaps in the urban rail network. Currently, only Line 1 of the Daejeon urban railway is in operation, and Line 2, a tram, is still in development, leading to the assessment that it will be difficult to meet travel demand in the new urban center and outlying areas in the short term.
According to the Metropolitan Transport Commission's "2024 Metropolitan Area Transport Survey," trips in the Daejeon area totaled 556,000, up 6.7% from a year earlier. It is the highest growth rate among metropolitan areas nationwide.
Daejeon selected the three-car articulated vehicle as a mid-tier mode between subway and bus. Building a new subway requires massive budgets and long construction periods, but regular buses alone are deemed insufficient to handle rising demand. The existing roads can be used as is, so no separate track construction is needed, and the cost burden is lower than a tram. Daejeon said that compared with a tram, construction costs can be cut by about 40% and operating costs by about 70%.
The introduction process has not been smooth. The current Motor Vehicle Management Act limits the length of articulated buses to 19 meters, making the over-30-meter three-car articulated vehicle ineligible for operation on Korean roads. In response, Daejeon applied to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in 2024 for a regulatory sandbox exemption and won approval in Jan. last year, securing a legal basis to conduct a two-year pilot operation.
In the vehicle selection process, products from China's CRRC and Switzerland's Hess were reviewed. Daejeon chose CRRC's vehicle, considering transport capacity and turnaround convenience. The CRRC model has driver's cabs at both ends, allowing operation at terminals without changing direction.
Daejeon aims to begin official service in Oct. The route will cover 6.5 kilometers from Konyang University Hospital to Doan Jung-ro to Doan-dong-ro to Yuseong Spa Station, with 16 stops installed. The vehicles are scheduled to run 43 times a day.
The price per vehicle is 3.1 billion won, higher than a standard electric bus (400 million to 500 million won), but Daejeon says a simple comparison is difficult given the urban-rail-level capacity and long service life. The city plans to continue operations by extending the regulatory sandbox and amending the law. Attention is on whether Daejeon's experiment will spread to other provincial metropolitan cities.