YOU have an appointment with the doctor, so you leave home with what you think is plenty of time to spare. But you did not count on running into a traffic jam. As the minutes tick by and your car slowly crawls along, you begin to get more and more anxious. Finally, you make it to the doctor’s office a half hour late.
One of the greatest frustrations of city life is traffic, especially the bumper-to-bumper traffic that clogs the streets and poisons the air. Unfortunately, this daily tribulation experienced by millions of city dwellers shows no sign of letting up.
The Texas Transportation Institute reported concerning the United States: “Congestion has grown everywhere in areas of all sizes.” The report added that the authorities are simply not able to devise solutions adequate for coping with the growing demands of city travelers. The situation is similar all over the world. Several thousand motorists in China recently found themselves stuck in a 60 mile long traffic jam that took the police several days to unravel. In Mexico City a 12 mile drive through the city center can take over four hours longer than it would take for the average pedestrian to walk the same distance.
The reason why city roads are clogged is not hard to find. Cities keep on growing relentlessly, and now about half the world’s population live in urban areas. As cities grow, so do the numbers of vehicles. One writer put it this way: “Too many people own too many cars, and they want to drive them in the same constricted space.”
Why Traffic Problems Are Hard to Solve
Mankind’s reliance on the motorcar means that cities must cope with growing numbers of vehicles. With a population of about four million, the city of Los Angeles, in the United States, now has more cars than people! Other cities may not have gone that far yet, but few can cope with the growing influx of vehicles. “Cities have not been conceived for the automobile,” states Carlos Guzmán, president of Madrid’s Urban Commission. Ancient cities with narrow streets suffer the most, but even in modern metropolises, wide roads quickly become snarled, especially during the morning and evening rush hours. “Large cities are now congested most of the day, and congestion is getting more acute,” observes Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue in his report “Urban Transport Problems.”
Since cars sell much more quickly than governments can build highways, a rapid growth in the number of vehicles can overwhelm even the best road system. “In the long run,” explains the book Stuck in Traffic—Coping With Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion, “building new roads or expanding existing ones does not reduce the intensity of peak-hour traffic congestion to any extent.”
Lack of sufficient parking facilities also leads to congestion. At any given moment, a significant number of the cars on city streets may be circulating merely for the purpose of finding somewhere to park. It is estimated that air pollution caused by traffic—mainly in cities—causes the death of some 400,000 people every year. According to one report, air contamination in Milan, Italy, is so bad that spending one day breathing the air of the city streets is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes.
The cost of traffic congestion must also be measured in the hours wasted and the stress suffered by drivers. The emotional toll is hard to quantify, but one study in the United States calculated that the economic cost of traffic jams in 75 of the country’s largest cities amounted to about 70 billion dollars a year. Can anything be done to relieve the situation?
By: Shane Smith. If you are looking for landscape or backyard lights then check out: http://makevoltz.com
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