# DAEGU - GYEONGBUK - GANGWON | Projects & Construction



## aquaticko (Mar 15, 2011)

^^What a terrible intersection! A 12-lane road and an 8-10 lane road? What is this, Florida? Korea's money needs to go less into trying to build supertall vanity projects and more into building out tram lines and cycling infrastructure. I've seen the excuse made that it's just not in Korean culture to do such a thing, but it's not in American culture, either, and it needs to happen here, too!

Also, I am very, very doubtful that that project will end up happening.


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## kimahrikku1 (Dec 24, 2012)

aquaticko said:


> ^^What a terrible intersection! A 12-lane road and an 8-10 lane road? What is this, Florida? Korea's money needs to go less into trying to build supertall vanity projects and more into building out tram lines and cycling infrastructure. I've seen the excuse made that it's just not in Korean culture to do such a thing, but it's not in American culture, either, and it needs to happen here, too!
> 
> Also, I am very, very doubtful that that project will end up happening.


Yeah, looking at Google Street, I count around 11 lanes on the East-West Axis, and 13 on the North-South Axis. And that doesn't even include the right turn lane which diverges from the main road even before the intersection. This is probably the biggest intersection of its kind in Daegu, but Daegu has quite a few of those. Actually, Daegu is a bit unique amongst Korean cities because it is quite flat, doesn't have big waterways near the city center, and is built with megablocks separated by fairly large perpendicular avenues. It's no South Florida or Phoenix, AZ, but the topography of the city is quite geometric by Korean standards. So they're relying on large avenues a lot. However, compared to other cities, Daegu doesn't have much in the way of expressways going near downtown, so there's actually quite a lot of congestion on these roads. And public transport is actually quite insufficient. It only has 3 subway lines, and they don't cover all neighborhoods, with big chunks of the city far from any subway station. Plus there are only 3 transfer stations all located near city center, so suburb to suburb travel is quite inconvenient. That's the drawback of having a city which is quite flat and round, as it makes rail routes a bit less obvious. This is kind of the opposite in Busan, which, while slightly more populated than Daegu, has its entire population concentrated in a few valleys in between mountains, which makes the subway system very efficient (and covering virtually all neighborhoods despite having no more than 6 lines).

But public transport is going to improve in Daegu. In 2024 will open the Daegu Metropolitan Railway, which will be quite similar to the Donghae Line in Busan. It will offer commuter rail levels of service on the existing conventional Gyeongbu Line, and will formally be part of the Daegu rapid transit system, offering transfers to subway Lines 1 and 3. Plus in 2024 Line 1 will be extended East a bit (won't really help in-city traffic, because the extension will be far into the outskirts of the city. But there is more to come. Next year will begin the construction of the Expo Line, which will basically be another monorail line like Line 3, albeit a bit shorter (10 stations, 12.5km), and will actually pass over this Beomeo Sageori, with transfers to all subway lines (including the Daegu Metropolitan Railway, at DongDaegu station). 2023 should also mark the start of the construction of the Daegu Industrial Line, a 36km line starting at SeoDaegu Station and going to the South-West, which will offer transfer with lines 1 and 3 and provide commuter rail levels of services. Once all these lines open in the next 7 years or so, Daegu will have a much more robust rail infrastructure.

That being said, there will still remain one Achilles' heel, the circular line. There were plans to build Line 4, a circular line which would have been a tram line. But the recently elected mayor Hong decided to scrap the plans and instead to build the line as a monorail. The exact technology nor the route have been decided though, so it's going to take quite some time before this line is built, if it ever is. But this line is truly essential because it will bring a lot more neighborhoods on the subway grid, and will be super important for connections in between lines, without having to go through the city center.

Which brings us back to trams and their role in Korean infrastructure. There still isn't any tram line in Korea, and the only one which has been in construction is the Wirye line in Seoul. And this past year or so, a couple of tram projects have seen setbacks. Apart from this Daegu Line 4 being turned into a monorail, and the Daejeon Line 2 project is back to the drawing board as well. The Oryukdo Line in Busan is being nerfed, plans for trams in Incheon are being slowed down, and there hasn't been much progress in places like Changwon, Ulsan or Seongnam which have been proposing trams. So apart from the Wirye Line, I think that the only new tram line coming soon is the C-Bay Park Line in Busan. Overall, I believe that tram might not work best for existing Korean cities. We're talking about fairly big cities, and trams are quite slow and with limited capacity. And they need to share space with roads, which is not so easy to do when the roads flow much differently from European cities, with Korean traffic reliant on only a couple of main big avenues instead of a multiplicity of smaller streets. So there are many questions about whether the extra capacity of the subway would lead to lower capacity/speed on the road, as well as potential safety concerns. I do think that trams have some future in Korea, but more in places like new developments which have more free space, or which have been designed from the get go to include trams (hence why lines such as the Wirye Line and C-Bay Park Line are the ones moving forward), or smaller cities which don't have enough demand for a full subway line. For Daegu, we would be talking about a circular tram line of maybe 35km, with probably at least 30 stops, and having to navigate dozens of mid to large-sized intersections. Quite the headache, with operational speed probably being too slow to be convenient for riders. Hence why priority has shifted to monorail (as similar shift to light metro was done in Gwangju for the under construction Line 2).

On the bike lane front though, I fully agree with you. Again, Daegu is quite flat, and the city is fairly "round" rather than stretched, which makes walking and cycling potentially quite interesting. Yet, the city doesn't have much of any bike infrastructure, apart from sidewalks which were kind of turned into bike lanes but in a very primitive way. Definitely they can do a better job to have proper bike lanes, and they probably can do a bit of road diet to have some true bike lanes as well. The city also lacks a separated bus lane system as well (they do have plans to build 3 sections of each around 5km, starting in 2025 or so), so a lot could be done in that area as well.


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## kimahrikku1 (Dec 24, 2012)

kimahrikku1 said:


> *Plans for 108-floor complex near Beomeo Sageori in Daegu*
> 
> According to some leaks, there are currently plans by a private developer (더킹펜트하우스장학사업 ) to build a 3-tower complex in Daegu, located on the North-East side of the Beomeo Sageori intersection. The towers would reach an height of 108 floors, 88 floors and 69 floors.
> 
> ...


*More information and renders about the 108-floor tower project in Beomeo (Daegu)*

There is some more news today regarding the plans to build a huge tower complex in the Beomeo area in Daegu. Yesterday's articles sounded more like a leak, but now we have some official communication from the developers about the projects.

The first one is the name of the project, which would be "*Beomeo Station The King Penthouse & Shopping Mall*". The renders are below.

In total, the project will have 3 towers and 1,502 officetel housing units. Tower A should will reach a height of 108 floors, Tower B will be 89 floors, and Tower C will be 69 floors. Apart from that, there will be 8 floors underground, as well as an observation tower on top of Tower A. The first 12 floors of Tower C would include a 5-star hotel, and floors 2 through 4 of Towers A and B would include a shopping mall. The costs of the project are estimated to be around KRW 2,100 billion.

As I mentioned, the architectural review, the first main step of the project, has not been completed at this point. The reason is apparently that the developer would have to be able to prove ownership of 80% of the plot. However, right now the developers apparently own only around 70% of the plot, but they're saying that it won't be an issue to reach 80%.

Officially, the developers are hoping to start construction in H1 2023 for a completion in 2027 after 4 years. If completed today, it would become the 9th tallest tower in the world by floor count, although in height it would probably be lower, probably around 400 meters.

This new update on the project does answer many questions, but it does raise many more as well. The main one is simply that of whether such project is viable, especially for officetel housing. The housing market is currently in a bit of (way overdue) downturn, and it's especially the case in Daegu, because it's the city in Korea which is having the most supply of new housing through redevelopments (with many projects under construction in the 45-49 Fl range), so there is already some level of saturation. The timeline is also quite suspicious, because it would require starting construction less than 9 months after its first announcement, while other projects of this scale in Korea have usually taken years to get approved and before starting construction. Another point is the cost. At KRW 2,100 billion, that's nothing to sneeze at. In height, the complex is roughly the size of the LCT The Sharp project in Busan, and for that project I found cost estimates going from KRW 1,500 billion to KRW 3,000 billion. So all things considered, KRW 2,100 billion does seem to make sense, considering the inflation and all. That being said, LCT The Sharp is a bit more ambitious architecturally, with a complex platform structure, and is on a plot of 66,000sqm. Based on the renders and the map, for this project, the plot would likely only be 17,000sqm at most, so that's a lot of many spent for a small amount of land.

Whatever the case is, since now this is a clear project, I'm creating a dedicated thread: DAEGU | Beomeo Station The King Penthouse & Shopping...


















'범어네거리 108층, 오피스텔+호텔+쇼핑 복합건물'…시행사측 청사진 공개


대구 범어네거리에 조성할 계획인 '범어역 더킹팬트하우스＆쇼핑...




news.imaeil.com


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## aquaticko (Mar 15, 2011)

kimahrikku1 said:


> Yeah, looking at Google Street, I count around 11 lanes on the East-West Axis, and 13 on the North-South Axis. And that doesn't even include the right turn lane which diverges from the main road even before the intersection. This is probably the biggest intersection of its kind in Daegu, but Daegu has quite a few of those. Actually, Daegu is a bit unique amongst Korean cities because it is quite flat, doesn't have big waterways near the city center, and is built with megablocks separated by fairly large perpendicular avenues. It's no South Florida or Phoenix, AZ, but the topography of the city is quite geometric by Korean standards. So they're relying on large avenues a lot. However, compared to other cities, Daegu doesn't have much in the way of expressways going near downtown, so there's actually quite a lot of congestion on these roads. And public transport is actually quite insufficient. It only has 3 subway lines, and they don't cover all neighborhoods, with big chunks of the city far from any subway station. Plus there are only 3 transfer stations all located near city center, so suburb to suburb travel is quite inconvenient. That's the drawback of having a city which is quite flat and round, as it makes rail routes a bit less obvious. This is kind of the opposite in Busan, which, while slightly more populated than Daegu, has its entire population concentrated in a few valleys in between mountains, which makes the subway system very efficient (and covering virtually all neighborhoods despite having no more than 6 lines).
> 
> But public transport is going to improve in Daegu. In 2024 will open the Daegu Metropolitan Railway, which will be quite similar to the Donghae Line in Busan. It will offer commuter rail levels of service on the existing conventional Gyeongbu Line, and will formally be part of the Daegu rapid transit system, offering transfers to subway Lines 1 and 3. Plus in 2024 Line 1 will be extended East a bit (won't really help in-city traffic, because the extension will be far into the outskirts of the city. But there is more to come. Next year will begin the construction of the Expo Line, which will basically be another monorail line like Line 3, albeit a bit shorter (10 stations, 12.5km), and will actually pass over this Beomeo Sageori, with transfers to all subway lines (including the Daegu Metropolitan Railway, at DongDaegu station). 2023 should also mark the start of the construction of the Daegu Industrial Line, a 36km line starting at SeoDaegu Station and going to the South-West, which will offer transfer with lines 1 and 3 and provide commuter rail levels of services. Once all these lines open in the next 7 years or so, Daegu will have a much more robust rail infrastructure.
> 
> ...


I think the relative formlessness of Korean cities absent geographical constraints traces back--again--to the historical short-sightedness of not placing rail transit at the forefront of Korea's transportation network. A train station--with its large capacity per area and cost--would've been a natural locus for development for Korean cities in the 60's and 70's. Countries with rapidly growing and urbanizing populations should plan for the maximum possible transportation capacity, which roads and cars simply are not.

In Daegu's particular case, the presence of two large intercity train stations on the Gyeongbu Line (Daegu and DongDaegu) ought to have been the obvious corridor from which to spin-out a large metro/regional rail system. The city avoided the worst American-style planning pitfall (putting actual highways through the city center), but still wasted huge amounts of valuable urban space on these enormous roads, which simply cannot have the same level of geographic efficiency because single-occupancy cars take up too much space for what they're transporting in 95% of cases--not to mention that such wide roads are very dangerous. The best thing I would think to do is a more of what Daegu's already done: elevated railways (monorail or otherwise) built over these roads or done cut-and-cover quickly and cheaply. Taepyeong-ro/Bukbisan-ro, south of and running roughly parallel to the Gyeongbu Line stands out, in particular; I know Line 2 already runs east-west under Beomeo-sageori, but something should be done to make the area more friendly to those outside of cars; the _shortest_ gap between pedestrian crossings on the streets leading into the intersection is 250m. I'd read about the reconsideration of the circumferential Line 4 as a monorail instead of a tram, and was glad to hear it. As you say, having a tram run over large distances is really suboptimal.

Maybe a Seoul-style BRT--maybe with overhead wire and IMC to extend service where needed--would be a good fit. That being said, I'd love to see Daegu become Korea's cycling capital; it's a much more natural fit for it than hilly Seoul or Busan.

Nonetheless, there's no denying that Korea's much more locked-in to a more resource-intensive mode of transportation than it ever made sense for it to be. Especially given that the country has always been dependent on importing petroleum, it could've only ever made sense to a country too beholden to the U.S.' way of thinking.

I hope planners in still-developing countries--Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam, etc.--will take the correct lessons from examples in East Asia and Europe. Build your cities around rail, cycling, and walking; nothing else will be able to keep up without tremendous amounts of wasted time and money...to say nothing of the attendant environmental destruction.


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