The great improvement of public transportation leads to an extraordinary change in modern urban life. While we hail the convenience and mobility that automobile has brought to us, we cannot neglect problems that come along with better transportation system. It is really necessary to get down to analyze some better policies to make them really benefit the citizens and improve the quality of life.
Sometimes, city planners seek to solve existing disadvantages without figuring out more efficient ways. One of the most inveterate difficulties is traffic congestion! In the book Sustainable Transportation: Policy, Planning and Implementation, the author stated in page 3 that building more roads and highways which perfectly suit the development of BAU (business as usual) did not lead to less traffic congestion. BAU gives rise to increasing demand of automobile and longer trips. Although in most of the big cities, no matter in developed or developing countries, high mobility and complete transportation system are always priorities of the government, we cannot construct them blindly. Traffic jam cannot be effectively relieved if the government or pertinent departments do not control the number of the automobile.
Comparing the States to my home country, China, although the number of the cars owned by each family is obviously lower than that in America, enormous population base also make the traffic congestion the most severest problem. Recently, in China, lots of big cities implement the even-odd license plate. While all cars will be restricted from driving at least one weekday depending on the last digit of their license plate numbers, during periods of heavier pollution, an even-odd license plate number rule would ban half the capital's 3.4 million cars from the roads which obviously relieve traffic pressure. For most of middle-class families with only one car, they are motivated to choose public transportation when they cannot use their cars. For the family with two or more cars, this rule can serve as restriction that each family is allowed to use only one car and other family member have to choose other alternatives. This strategy not only guarantees the better traffic condition during the period of big events, like Olympic Games and World Expo, but raises the awareness of sustainable lifestyle among citizens.
Besides appealing for more farsighted strategy for traffic congestion, the author of Sustainable Trans also emphasized that access profoundly affects the quality of urban life. We cannot underestimate the advantages of effective access which basically determine whether people in the city can make good use of infrastructures and facilities. In other word, transportation system serves the community by enabling citizens to access jobs, resources and amenities in an efficient manner at a reasonable cost and support the area's quality of life. Let's look at the relationship between access and quality of life. In Charlottesville, employees spend and average of 15.9 minutes commuting work which are lower than the state average of 26.9 minutes. Such an efficient access is due to the fact that 98 percent of city residents live within a 0.5 mile of a bike, pedestrian or transit facility and more than half of county residents live within a 0.25 mile of sidewalk or trail. This statistics reveals that reasonable access to the sidewalk, bus station and bike lane brings more convenient life. As the result, in order to let transportation facilities really assist and benefit most of the people, we need to perfectly integrate these facilities into our ordinary life and affect people unconsciously to absorb some environment-friendly means of transportation. For instance, People who live near the bike lane and pedestrian are more likely to ride bicycle or walk. What we saw in Charlottesville undoubtedly explained that city planning and especially transportation system exert great influence on people’s lifestyle and lead us either to a healthy and convenient city or stressful and congested life.
As I mentioned above, when properly designed and refined, some problems hindering further development of transportation system will no longer be the obstacles. We should have confidence that there will be better strategies to achieve better quality of life in the near future.
Bibliograghy:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/6512685.htm
As I was reading your blog post, it was difficult for me to understand exactly what you were writing about until I was done, as your title and thesis cover large topic (as opposed to a specific subtopic). I think it'd be easier to understand if you revised your claim/thesis to better summarize what your next two paragraphs are going to be talking about.
ReplyDeleteDid sustainable transportation talk about the even-odd license plate rule in China? If not, I'd consider citing a source for it.
Hey,David~thanks for your advices.I have revised my blog and narrowed my topic which just covers some strategies to solve existing problems and to improve public transportation :D
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