Daejeon People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy "Make the hydrogen tram change process transparent and disclose the list of members."

Daejeon People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy: "A separate evaluation committee member decides... The list of committee members must be revealed."

(Daejeon = Yonhap News) Reporter Park Joo-young = Suspicion is growing about the process by which Daejeon City suddenly changed the power supply method for trams on Urban Railway Line 2 to hydrogen trams, which have no proven cases.

A civic group in the Daejeon area said that the organization that reviewed the Daejeon railway policy was not the entity that decided on the method of power supply, and demanded that the reason for changing the battery to a hydrogen tram be transparently disclosed.

According to a press release issued by the Daejeon Participatory Autonomy Citizens' Solidarity (hereinafter referred to as the Daejeon Participatory Solidarity) on the 29th, the Daejeon Participatory Solidarity requested information disclosure regarding the status, minutes, and agenda of the Railway Policy Committee held from 2022 to the present. After the committee decided to receive proposals for four power supply methods in December 2022, the committee was not held until the dispatch method was confirmed as the final hydrogen.

The Railroad Policy Committee is an organization created by Daejeon City to discuss the direction of Urban Railway Line 2 in accordance with the ordinance and deliberates the establishment and changes of basic policies such as tram construction and operation. The committee held four meetings in February and December 2022, December 2023, and November 2024. At the February 2022 committee meeting, a Daejeon city official suggested using the battery method as the basis, saying that it is expected to take time to actually apply the technology because the hydrogen method has not been type approved or verified. There were also concerns that if hydrogen was chosen, the Daejeon tram would not be available at any time.

Next, the committee agenda held in December was 'Bidding plan for determining tram power supply method', which included receiving technical proposals for four methods, including hydrogen.

Afterwards, on November 7 of the following year, the 8th popularly elected Daejeon City confirmed hydrogen trams as the power supply method, but the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy explained that there was no record of the Railway Policy Committee selecting hydrogen in any of the published data.

The Railway Policy Committee was held in writing only in December of that year, a month after the hydrogen power supply method was confirmed. It was not a place to deliberate on a decision, but to report on a decision that had already been made.

In July of the same year, the city published its own notice, ‘Guide to submitting a technical proposal for vehicle system selection,’ and three months later, seven judges evaluated and selected the hydrogen fuel cell method. The decision was made by seven separate evaluation committee members, not the Railway Policy Committee delegated by the ordinance.

Daejeon Participation Solidarity requested additional information disclosure regarding the basis for the establishment of the evaluation committee, list of members, institutional evaluation scores, and operating cost evaluation data.

Daejeon People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy emphasized, "Citizens cannot know what data the committee members received, what opinions they expressed, or whether any committee members raised issues with the hydrogen conversion," and added, "Only when the decision process is transparently revealed can we decide whether to reexamine or pursue it."

Previously, Lee Jae-young, a senior research fellow at the Daejeon Research Institute, said at a policy debate on the topic 'What should we do with Daejeon Urban Railway Line 2 trams?' held at the Daejeon City Council on the 22nd, "The vehicle emergency method was approved by Daejeon Mayor Heo Tae-jeong in February 2022 as a method of using a mix of catenary and non-caterline cables and using batteries, but four months after the change of mayor due to local elections, Daejeon City adopted the electric power method without even going through a public hearing. “We decided to power the tram with a wire-free hydrogen fuel cell that is available nowhere else in the world,” he said, adding, “There is a need to disclose information about changes to the power supply method.”