Congestion

Congestion causes increased costs for travelers and freight movement, loss of
time, ancients, and psychological strain. There is also congestion of transit vehicles during
peak periods, not just in large cities but also in small cities. Congestion of pedestrians on
sidewalks frequently occurs in the downtown areas of large cities at lunchtime.

Caesar’s innovation was the forerunner of what is now called an auto- free zone.
Congestion is what most people find objectionable about travelling in cities. Congestion has
several generic causes, the first is urbanization – the concentration of people and economic
activities in urban areas. If everyone lived and worked on farms or small towns scattered over
the landscape, congestion would be rare. But most people want to live in cities or suburbs,
and it is efficient for most productive activities to cluster in cities. The main reason to locate
in cities is to reduce travel. Travel distances are reduced, but the trade-off is that travel
becomes slower.

The second cause is specialization within cities. People want to travel between
different activities (or land uses), which are dispersed around the city. Workplaces are
concentrated in some areas, living places in other areas, and recreation activities in still
others. But these activities are interdependent, and people must travel between them.

The most important part of this is the separation of workplaces and homes, creating
the journey to work. This became widespread with industrialization. In the Middle Ages, the
usual pattern in European cities was for a building have a shop and workroom on the first
floor, kitchen and dining room on the second floor and sleeping quarters on the upper floors.
Going to work simply meant going downstairs.

The third cause is the problem of matching supply and demand temporally. The
supply of transportation facilities in U.S cities is very large but relatively fixed. Demand,
varies greatly over the day; this is the peaking problem. Largely from the journey to work and
the practice of having most people start and end their workdays at about the same time.

The fourth cause of congestion is that supply often stimulates demand. Increases in
transportation capacity can be self- defeating. A new highway that seems spacious when it
opens may fill up with traffic in a few years. People seize opportunities to travel more; this
comes with a rising standard of living. Furthermore, development is attracted to sites with
superior accessibility because of better movement facilities. In time, this advantage may
decline because of congestion.

Increasing transportation supply is not sufficient to end congestion. It is also not

economic: the cost of building enough capacity to eliminate congestion (Particularly during
rush hour) would be overwhelming. It is more economic to all some congestion. People
complain about it, but most tolerate rather than move elsewhere.

One form of transportation supply with potentially great capacity is transit serving.
There the agglomeration of human activities in a small area is so intense that circulation by
private vehicles causes recurrent congestion, which no feasible expansion of the street system
could eliminate.

This is particularly true of highly centralized cities where the worst congestion found
on approaches to the central business district (CBD). It would be impossible to move
hundreds of thousands of workers to the CBD during the peak period entirely by automobiles.

Mobility

The transportation problem is usually labeled mobility, accessibility. Our society

requires a great deal of travel, but people do not have equal abilities to travel or equal access
to the transportation system. The automotive highway system of transportation has been
emphasized. Most people find this more or less satisfactory, but some people are unable to
use this system. They have been called the transportation-disadvantaged.

The exact size of this group depends on definition and estimation techniques, bu is at
least a sizable minority. This group is defined to include persons who do not have a car,
which t father takes to work; the mother has to get a long without, not to mention the
children. With this broader definition, some have estimated the transportation- disadvantaged
more than half the population.

One proposal to remedy this is to guarantee everyone a personal vehicle. It might

even be cheaper for the government to pay for this rather than preserving mass transit, which
requires large subsidies. However, it is not just economics that makes some people “ carless
”. There will always be some in the population who cannot use a car who do not want to.
Some people are physically or mentally unable to drive. Many children are too young to get a
driver’s license. And some people prefer not drive, even if they could (especially the elderly).
 Obviously, congestion is more serious in large cities than in small ones. In smaller
places, it would be physically feasible, and perhaps economically efficient, to handle a travel
by automobiles (including rental vehicles and taxis). There would be some com gestion, but it
would be tolerable by any objective standards. No city has an ideal street system, but
incremental improvements are continually made. A street system could be developed in a city
of a few hundred thousand people that would handle all travel adequately.

In small cities, the primary role of transit is to provide mobility to the transportation
disadvantaged. This is a matter of equity more than efficiency. It reflects the view that travel
is essential to human beings and that all citizens are entitled to some form of transportation
service, regardless of their circumstances.

Ancillary Impacts

The ancillary impacts of the transportation system (what economists call externalities)
make up the third aspect of the transportation problem.

1. Accidents

Transit is clearly a safer mode than automobiles for moving people in urban areas.

2. Energy Consumption

Transit has the potential to reduce oil consumption which are more transit-oriented,
use much less energy per capita than their U.S counterparts. The current approach is to make
automobiles more fuel-efficient, and this is producing results. One good argument for
expanding transit system is the uncertainty about the future energy situation.

3. Environmental Impacts

These include air and water pollution and noise. Motor vehicles are major sources of
carbon monoxide and ozone, the two most common pollutants. Transit vehicles have the
capacity to cause less air pollution per passenger, a large shift of motorists to transit would
improve the air quality.

4. Land Consumption

The automobile is a voracious user of urban space. In the CBDs of some cities, streets
and parking take up 60 to 70 percent of the surface area. Freeway interchanges and parking
lots consume vast expanses in the suburbs.

5. Aesthetics

This space consumption has contributed to the visual blight of urban areas. Neither a
parking lot nor a freeway nor a strip commercial street is very pleasant to look at. Motor
vehicles, moving or stationary, tend to dominate the cityscape. Billboards, spoil rural vistas.
Even transit facilities can have deleterious effects: Old time elevated tracks cast deep
shadows and lower property values nearby.

6. Disruption of the Urban Fabric

Major transportation routes can form phy barriers the divide neighborhoods, separate
pupils from their schools, and cut off st from their trade areas. The construction of new
facilities taking property forces relocation of families and business.

7. Land Use

Since World War II, the country has adapted its economy and lifestyle the automotive
highway system, and this has altered urban development patte Multicentered, low-density
metropolises create many problems: They consume a lo land, increase coasts and energy use,
and reduce walking to a minimum. While ma planners and pundits have criticized urban
sprawl, it is obvious that a majority of people in the United States prefer living in single-
family homes in the suburbs, despite t costs and disadvantages.