Principal Voices is intended to be a global debate everyone can participate in, and we are keen to hear your views on the subjects being discussed. These comments will form a central part of the Principal Voices Web site.

How can we stop cars from choking cities?

Name
E-mail address
Your location
Comment
	Comment Policy All fields are required

Look at Delhi, capital of India. It's also a capital in terms of number of cars it has. There are more cars in Delhi than in three other major metropolitan cities of India put together, with 1.4 million cars and an equal number of other vehicles the roads. It's a nightmare in terms of traffic.

A recent survey has shown that if all these vehicles are aligned one after the other it would cover the distance that lies between India and the U.S. With easy loan facilities residents of Delhi are adding thousands of more cars each year without caring about it's implication on traffic parking and the cities environment.

The growth of personal vehicles has surpassed planners' imagination and in a hurried manner unplanned public transport is being put into place without adequate policies to dissuade individuals from adding to the existing vehicle population. With common wealth games round the corner, the city government is trying to come up with ad-hoc solutions to ease traffic, only adding to the discomfort of residents.

There is a need to come up with unpopular policies to counter the growth of vehicles which seems unlikely as there are elections early next year. It is time policy makers overlook political considerations and do what is right.

Look no farther than Singapore. It is one of the world's densest cities, yet there is no traffic. Why? Because it has a good public transport and infrastructure system, good management of the car population and disciplined citizens.

As long as we give more importance to personal liberties and comfort, versus the welfare of the general population, we will always choke our cities with cars. It's as simple as that. We all need a little sacrifice on our part.

Cheaper public transport and more cycle routes for cyclists -- see Denmark.

Urbanization happens when the population becomes larger and the area expands. It is a natural process, even when cars are not invented. But now the overburdened cities with crowded populations and private cars are not quite a natural thing.

People rush into the big cities for more and better opportunities, for it is an 'in' thing, some sort of status, even the work they do is the lowest paid (especially true with Chinese people who attach great importance to their status).

Not only the individuals -- companies also prefer to chose large cities when they set their foot on a new territory, because there is greater purchase power.

So, traffic is only one factor contributing to the present situation. People are more aware about their privacy, due to which, private things like villas and cars are invented and enjoyed.

Increase the price of petrol.

I looked at every comment here, and I definitely agree many of the comments, but not all.

The problem with us is that we tend to see problems only on the surface. What we should do is to dig deeper into the problem -- why are city thoroughfares so congested?

Firstly, I think it is because cities are magnets for middle-class people who can afford "wheels." They tend to show their new status by having cars. And living in the cities is an "in" thing. Second, cities attract people looking for more lucrative jobs, especially fresh graduates.

When these people go to the cities, they do not only buy cars -- they also transmit a signal to others in society, like businesses, to operate there also because there are more customers to buy their products. This leads to additional "wheels" moving into the city - delivery trucks, cargo carriers, buses, taxis, etc.

Third, most if not all of the agencies and/or offices of the government are in cities, like in Manila. Fourth, most business sites and/or job opportunities are in urban areas. This alone is a big factor contributing to the fast rise of the number of vehicles in cities.

I think it is best for politics and economics to be partners. It is not always easy, but if there is political will on the part of the government, and cooperation on the part of the business sector, i think there will be an impact.

Yes, public transport like subway systems and light rail transits will ease congestion. But are we sure that those who have wheels will give up their vehicles and use a public ride instead? So mass education is needed.

Another option is to decentralize areas of too much concentration of governmental offices and/or business centers. This may sound like Saba's (Pakistan) comment (below) but it isn't actually. By transferring offices to other areas in the country, we lessen the numbers of people in the place.

Anyway, I will add to this the next time i drop by. Thanks for posting my comments on this site. Principal Voices is an innovation in the international forums concerning global issues. Good luck! God bless!

I have an idea to provide affordable housing in the inner city as well as having businesses in the inner city.

Here in San Diego, public transportation is a joke. We have a trolley but its main purpose is to take you from shopping mall to shopping mall and you have to drive or take a bus to get to the trolley station. Utterly useless.

Call this an over-generalization if you will, but people are selfish. No one wants to share a bus with 30 people when they can drive around in their SUVs while talking on their cellphone.

Our sense of community and patience is eroded to the point of extinction. Plan cities with good public transportation, close shops (and I don't mean Starbucks) that provide basic needed services, and affordable housing. Also build up not out -- yes tall buildings are blight but they are a necessity. And a better one then urban sprawl.

I don't really know how we can completely stop this problem. But one way we can surely improve on the severity of the situation is reduce the size of our vehicles -- for example, the oversized, lifted 4x4 trucks that drive on public highways and roads.

The size of these trucks is uncalled for. There is no reasonable need for a truck that size to be on city roads. Not only are trucks oversized, but SUVs like the Tahoe or the Yukon are also way too big. They not only take up too much space but they are a threat to people driving and/or walking around them.

People buy these vehicles to paint an image of themselves to portray to the public. They believe they look or feel powerful driving this huge mass of oil and metal. THERE IS NO PRACTICAL USE TO DRIVE A HUGE 4X4 TRUCK ON HIGHWAYS AND COMMERCIAL/RESIDENTIAL STREETS!

These vehicles waste our gasoline reserves, take up space, and pose a threat to those around them. So society I ask you why? Why do we continue to develop as a society in a direction that is so obviously inconsiderate, dangerous, and environmentally harmful?

One reason why people use car is that people find it easier and more comfortable to ride in their own cars. So, people buy cars and they choke cities.

The idea here which I am presenting is that people will always want to buy cars as long as there exists a threat of their convenience and comfort. So, a probable solution is to improve the kind of facilities that are already present in order to attract people onto the facilities, in turn meaning people would no buy cars.

In economics, if people are satisfied then they will not spend more just to be satisfied.

How do we stop cars from choking cities? By providing adequate, convenient, affordable and safe public transportation 24x7x365.

I live in Miami and used to live in Merida, Venezuela. Coming from such a small city to such a large one has allowed me to apreciate some key things.

The public transportation in Miami is terrible and I partially blame it on the fact that it is operated by the county. Back in Venezuela, public transportation was mainly private and to move aorund the city was no problem.

My suggesiton is let transportation be private but with goverment checks to ensure that no price gouging exists.

Cars are choking our cities because they can ... and must.

Fewer people live in the center of cities that they work in, and they commute in cars because the infrastructure is built that way. It's easy to commute to work by car -- it's difficult to commute by public transportation. Fuel taxes support roads, nothing supports public transportation.

Suburbs are too attractive with respect to cities. The air is better, the schools are better, the stores are better.

Cities are not only social structures, but they are physical structures. In addition to keeping the social area intact, we should also encourage people to interact with their environment.

When it takes you eight minutes to do something that might take 30, you don't see as much. You don't have to interact as much.

Same can be said when comparing cars and walking. Walking allows you to understand the city much better than driving. But perhaps driving might help you to understand the city better than a subway. Just a thought.

Simple.... Don't let conditions get so bad that people are forced to migrate into the cities. Provide them with the opportunities in the villages and they will surely not want to come to the cities. Provide them with a better standard of living and they won't overcrowd the cities.

I have read the comment of Saba from Pakistan. I beg to disagree.

Let me put it this way -- providing villages with opportunities will make villages turn into cities in time. So, it is really not a solution for choking cities, it simply serves as an anti-catalyst to the present problem.

The very reason is to have an efficient facilities that will lessen the usage of personal cars. Why build an auto for four persons than a bus for 50 persons? Think! (The exclamation mark serves as a challenge not an insult.)

Simply put, let's stop making affordable, desirable housing available only outside urban limits. We can't solve the problem without correcting the actions that create it -- here are the three key challenges:

First, homebuilders are allowed to continue to build communities on the fringes of urban areas because land is inexpensive, restrictions are limited, there is at least one major freeway nearby and first-time home buyers are easy to attract.

Therein lies the problem -- roadways, shopping centers and public transportation are not convenient to these fringe communities which forces residents to drive everywhere, including the cities.

So rather than living near conveniences and employment (where real estate is at a premium and conveniences can be reached by foot or mass transit), many people make the choice to live miles away in order to afford a home or enjoy a more peaceful, less polluted atmosphere.

Second, you can't tempt people to leave their cars behind and rely on mass transportation if the transportation isn't reliable, convenient, safe, easy to use, and affordable.

Third, infrastructure and mass transit always seems to be an afterthought to addressing traffic congestion, following the development of communities housing thousands of families.

Integrated transport and land-use policy that focuses on quantifiably reducing transport energy requirements is needed.

Here is an abstract of a possible solution: transport energy resources are largely finite, subject to constraints and a major cause of pollution.

Transport-energy planning is not currently included in traditional transport and urban planning. However, transport energy is related to both land use and transport systems, therefore transport-energy policy has the ability to positively influence urban design.

A new tool has been created, the Transport Energy Specification, which is intended for use within existing local government urban planning frameworks.

In order to use this tool, a transport-energy limit is first defined by planning authorities that sets a quantifiable design boundary for urban and transport system development.

The Transport Energy Specification is then used to ensure development occurs within the defined design boundary.

A case study was performed to demonstrate the required process to achieve a Transport Energy Specification for an urban region.

Karlsruhe, Germany was selected for the case study and the results showed that a minimal 0.97MJ of transport energy per person per week was required, the equivalent energy a 60W light bulb uses in four and a half hours.

This was largely due to: high residential density, many activities located within the residential area and the ease and safety of active transport (cycling and walking).

We should increase taxes for cars with big engines, as well as improve the quality of public transportation (safety, comfort).

I personally believe that once this matter has been improved, people will think twice before deciding to drive their own car into the city, since it will cost more for parking and petrol, not to mentioned the stress of traffic jams.

Karachi has a population of more than 10 million. Nowadays, the issue of the pathetic state of public transport there is being raised by a lot of people.

Proposed solutions include everything from reviving the KCR (Karachi Circular Railway) to Levitated Trains, to running buses on the old tracks of the KCR! It is relevant to mention here that the KCR was built in the late 80s.

The situation is so bad that people in ambulances don't make it because of the traffic. Public transport is one of the most important issues faced by any local government , especially in Karachi since it is Pakistan's only port city at present.

An efficient system should be devised and then implemented no matter what the cost. A good and efficient public transport system will go a long way towards improving the city , the environment , and the general quality of life in Karachi.

If a good system is implemented and given an exclusive track or lane on roads then people will surely prefer the public transport because it will be so much better than cars, time-wise.

In Indian cities, the problem is different. It is not the cars but a very high density of two wheelers (motor-bikes and scooters) that is creating the problem.

In Pune, for example, out of about 1.4 million vehicles, 1.2 million (85%) are two-wheelers. Pune has only one public transport facility -- the public buses -- and the fleet is old, inefficient and unreliable, hence such a large density of two-wheelers.

Our further point of worry is the rising number of cars, which the crooked, narrow city streets are unable to cope with.

Parking has become not just a problem but a menace. People now fight for parking places. Whether strengthening of public transport will solve this traffic disease is doubtful.

I believe public transport fails because it does not meet people`s emotions and desire for comfort.

Private cars are still widely preferred over buses, subways and other mass transportation systems, even in very crowded cities. No matter how convenient public transport may be, people are still looking to private cars or motorcycles.

Public transport is still not comfortable, boring and is not flexible enough to take people from their homes to their desired destination point-to-point, especially when the weather is adverse.

We cannot look for a solution ignoring people`s emotions, needs and beliefs. People like to "own" their transportation system, as the "owning" desire rests deep inside of each one of us.

Public transport as it is conceived today is not the answer. Today, car manufacturing companies are better focused at delivering a solution by looking for smaller, cleaner and smarter vehicles. In the end we will have to integrate the best of private and public systems.

In Mumbai, it boils down to lack of an effective mass rapid transport system. This is a city tightly contained by the sea on three sides (the island city), with a density of population ranging from 27,500-45,000 persons per square kilometer and a vehicular population of over 12,000,000 in its small land mass.

Every day, an average of 7-8 persons die on the tracks of the suburban rail systems because of overcrowding, yet till recently no serious attempt was made to upgrade public transportation!

It's only now -- with choked roads, growing air pollution, lines of cars, a lack of parking space and road rage -- that serious attempts are being made to address the problem.

I think the problem of cars can be tackled by car pooling or improved public transport systems -- if we can only educate people in this area it will improve things to a great extent.

I think the development of effective transportation systems needs much more attention from governments of the all countries.

Even in developed countries, many do not have good urban transport systems.

Increasing fuel prices is not the answer for reducing cars on the roads; we need effective public transport systems. I think public transport should be given much more emphasis than waging war on other countries and wasting money, human life and resources.

Increasing the price of fuel and creating a sustainable public transport system that is cheap and easy to use will dramatically help reduce the number of individually owned vehicles in our cities.

I think that if, let's say, New York had basically every thing to offer in public transport, and every transport that has been invented is used in that city, this city will then become an influence on other cities to help reduce air pollution and so forth.

I've had the opportunity to travel parts of Europe and Asia. I also lived in China for a year. I learned well the benefits of public transportation. I am behind it 150 percent.

The problem that we have here in the U.S. is that our cities (and in part our economy) have been built around the idea of private cars.

To build an effective public transportation system in most American cities will take an extreme amount of planning and building. It would take a lot of talking to convince most people to back it. Some people seem to think our country will collapse into a depression overnight if we even think about using cars less.

People need to be educated on the benefits of walking to the corner store. I used to think that 10 minutes was too far to walk to the store. Now I'm willing to walk an hour.

Plus, if you're willing to walk to the store, then why wouldn't you be willing to walk to catch some public transport? I find standing on a crowded bus or train much more fulfilling than sitting alone in my car in a traffic jam.

The city of St. Louis is a prime example of the lack of major public transportation; it has only one light rail system stretching from the western suburbs to southern Illinois.

It has a bus system, but there are no convenient routes to go from my home to work. They are expanding the light rail system, but I will still have to walk a mile, across congested mega-streets and on-ramps, to get there.

The best solution in my opinion to the cars choking our cities is this -- get rid of the need! If we have everyone living at closer quarters, where everyone lives and works, and yet still find ways to solve the greater psychological issue of dense urban living, we will find the happy center.

Sure, public transportation gives a solution, and banning cars from the inner cities may reduce levels of smog and nuisance. But as the London (congestion charge) example shows it is not THE solution, since private cars account only for a small portion of the problem.

What can we do with the daily truck deliveries, taxis, professionals entering the city every day?

In both Chicago and Seattle I was able to live without owning a car for many years. I would rent a car or flexcar in order to get out of the city.

However, with a new son and new job/apartment, I find it nearly impossible to live without a car, and I make an effort. I drive a bio-diesel car to reduce my footprint, and I try and walk/bike whenever I can, but our current US lifestyles/urban "planning" almost require car ownership.

This is likely because cars, oil, and road construction are very lucrative for people who have influence on policy.

Paolo Soleri (architect and urban planner) had excellent observations on the inefficiency of location and distribution of goods and people. His visions for highly concentrated urban centers connected by high speed rail links and planes, with natural space between are lovely. And this was 30 years ago.

People will not spontaneously hop out of their cars, or vote for rapid transit instead of roads, while having a car is so convenient/necessary/cheap.

Many of us can't afford to live where we work or consume. The current unsustainable approach will collapse under its own weight, but one would hope for foresight and planning.

Investing in more efficient/healthy cities will only happen when those who make policy are sufficiently uncomfortable, through public outcry and their pocket book.

We could really use a benevolent dictator to enforce all the great suggestions of parking, tax, and rapid transit reform suggested. Too bad Seattle's attempt at rapid transit (monorail) just choked on its own bureaucratic waste.

How about getting rid of parking inside cities? If you force everyone to park on the outskirts of the city and get around the actual city by public transit then you would effectively have no cars in the city.

This would also mean that cities would have to invest in public transit and infrastructure, which cities other than New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago so far have done very little of.

Perhaps the (US) Federal Government needs to get rid of the Highway Administration and create a public transit administration that will focus government resources on building public transit rather than highways?

One sure fire way to extricate Americans from their cars is to tax gasoline in much the same way European countries tax gasoline purchases.

Twenty-five cents a year extra for five years, maybe longer, with the proceeds going towards rebuilding of the rail network infrastructure, once the envy of the world. This includes Amtrak, commuter rail, light rail, and subways.

Rail corridors are the most obvious step -- say not only the north east corridor but a south east corridor from Washington to Atlanta, maybe on to Miami and New Orleans.

Also a Midwest corridor with Chicago as the hub and several western corridors, all tied together by long distance trains and planes. No more energy wasting airline trips between Washington and Pittsburgh when a high speed rail link is far more efficient and over time cost effective.

There are people who continue to deny the impact that automobile emissions have on the environment. The U.S. is the absolute worst in the over-consumption and unnecessary use of fuel.

It is absolutely necessary to have effective public transportation in large cities, and it is becoming necessary in smaller cities as well. I hope that all large cities will adopt subways, rails, and other mass transit systems.

American cities (other than New York) differ from other international cities in having fewer transportation options.

We need to examine our love of automobiles in light of increased densities. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong knows that in a city with a working transportation system private automobiles are at best irrelevant and at worst a liability.

Los Angeles is a good example of the worst possible way to solve the problem.

In the United States and Canada, it will be particularly difficult to separate people from the private automobile.

There are many reasons, one of them being an underlying snobbery that pervades the middle and upper economic groups in those countries. Even with a free public transit system -- school buses -- many people still drive their children to school, clogging up the roads.

Another reason is that the established infrastructure with its sprawling residential areas spread out away from employment centers, which are also scattered about, makes it especially difficult to establish a public transit system that would give people an advantage from taking the car out of the garage.