A drunk Kiribati man who walked 4 kilometers down the light rail track in Busan sparked a major row over poor management of transit safety.

The Busan-Gimhae Light Rail Transit said on Thursday a 22-year old man from Kiribati was caught walking on the train track near Sasang Station last Tuesday in the afternoon.

The man was safely removed from the track but his behavior had entailed a high risk, given that the fully-automated trains on the BGLRT operate without on-train staff.

The man, initially spotted on the track near Gimhae International Airport Station, was shortly reported to the BGLRT by the passers-by. However, it took 50 minutes since the initial report for the BGLRT to remove him from the railway, after he had walked 4 kilometers down the track.

According to the BGLRT, the 22-year old man from Kiribati, a country in the Pacific Ocean, was on his way to Gimhae International Airport to catch his flight. Wandering around under the influence of alcohol, he got stranded from his company and walked into the train track.

The man’s act was an infraction of the Railroad Safety Act, but the BGLRT had let him leave the country without putting him under a proper investigation.

In the absence of a thorough investigation, the BGLRT has still been unable to identify the exact route through which the man broke into the train track: a crucial piece of information needed to identify the weak spot in the railway’s safety mechanism and prevent such trespassing in the future.

The BGLRT also did not report the incident to its oversight body, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.


(mjk625@heraldcorp.com)