The Spring Festival holiday is approaching. In order to curb people’s travel and prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Yonhap reported on the 9th that the South Korean government has stipulated that all highways across the country will be toll normally from the 11th to 13.
Jingxiang News quoted South Korea’s Ministry of Land and Transport on the 9th as saying that the government has designated the five days from the 10th to 14 as the “Spring Festival Special Traffic Countermeasures Period”.
Relevant agencies jointly formulated and implemented special traffic countermeasures to strengthen pandemic prevention work. During this period, canteens were banned and only packed in all highway service areas managed by the Korean Road Commune.
The Korean Road Commune plans to separate the entrance and exit routes of the expressway service area, minimize interpersonal contact, and strengthen the management through access registration.
At the same time, more guidance personnel will be deployed to carry out inspections and disperse traffic in the service area through congestion guidance systems and electronic display screens.
In order to minimize people’s travel during the Spring Festival, South Korea’s JTBC TV station said that the government plans to collect normal expressway tolls from the 11th to 13th, and the relevant income will be used for pandemic prevention activities.
According to the report, South Korea began to cancel the expressway toll during the festival in 2017. However, the South Korean government also cancelled the free highway access policy last Mid-Autumn Festival.
South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport predicts that the number of people returning home to visit their families during the Spring Festival this year will decrease by 33% compared with last year, about 21.92 million.
However, although the number of travelers has decreased, due to the pandemic, most people will choose to travel by themselves rather than mass transportation.
In addition, workers at high-speed toll stations will go on strike on the 10th, Yonhap predicts that the highway will fall into chaos.
In addition, South Korea has also strengthened pandemic prevention measures for mass transportation. In order to maintain the distance between passengers in the car, the railway department only sells window seats; buses and airlines also encourage passengers to reserve window seats first; the number of passengers on board shall not exceed 50%.
Strengthen disinfection work before and after operation of all vehicles and ensure that they are ventilated at any time, and sell them in a non-face-face manner.
In order to strengthen the prevention and control of the pandemic during the Spring Festival, the South Korean pandemic prevention department announced a series of epidemic prevention measures on January 31.
Taking into account the livelihood difficulties faced by individual industrial and commercial households, the South Korean government partially relaxed the pandemic prevention measures in non-Capital Circle from the 8th, allowing public gathering facilities in non-Capital Circle to close from the original late. It was postponed from 9 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
South Korea’s Central Pandemic Prevention Headquarters reported on the 9th that as of 00:00 on the same day, South Korea had 303 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, a total of 81,487 confirmed cases and 1,482 deaths compared with 00:00 the previous day.
Yonhap said that this is the number of new cases in South Korea rising to more than 300 every day.
