Altteul Card Users Save an Average of 12,756 KRW per Month

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo In-ho] In the first half of this year, users of the Metropolitan Altteul Transportation Card saved an average of 12,756 KRW per month, reducing their public transportation expenses by 19.4%.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's Metropolitan Transportation Committee and the Korea Transportation Safety Authority announced on the 10th the results of an analysis of the usage performance of the Metropolitan Altteul Transportation Card project for the first half of 2020.

Altteul Card users used public transportation an average of 38 times per month in the first half of this year and spent 65,614 KRW on fares. It was found that they saved 12,756 KRW (with benefits of 8,127 KRW in mileage accumulation and 4,629 KRW in card discounts), reducing their average monthly transportation expenses by 19.4%.

Since March, youths aged 19 to 34 with a median income below 50% have received additional Altteul Card mileage (100 KRW to 200 KRW per use). They received an additional average mileage of 2,423 KRW per month, saving an average of 13,026 KRW monthly (8,444 KRW mileage and 4,582 KRW card discount), which is 31.3% of their public transportation expenses.

Looking at monthly usage performance, the number of Altteul Card uses and savings slightly decreased in March and April but gradually increased in May and June. This is analyzed as a sign that public transportation usage, which had generally decreased due to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19), is recently recovering.

Furthermore, analyzing user types showed that young people in their 20s (55.7%) and 30s (27.6%) still have a high response rate (83.3%), indicating active participation by youth who heavily depend on public transportation.

By gender, the participation rate of women was 75.6%, higher than men at 24.4%. By occupation, office workers (74.5%) and students (14.2%) used the card the most, showing popularity among young office workers and women.

By region, residents of Gyeonggi Province used the card most frugally (mileage accumulation of 8,794 KRW), followed by Incheon (8,286 KRW) and Seoul (8,001 KRW), where mileage accumulation was relatively high.

Meanwhile, when the socioeconomic benefits generated by walking or using bicycles are converted into monetary value, it was found that the total reached 8.44 billion KRW over the past six months, indicating that the benefits are about five times the costs (mileage).