essay on
Transportation problem in urban areas
Answers
Answer:
There are many problems in transportation of Urban areas such as,
1. Despite investment in roads infrastructure
2. Land use and transport planning and development
3. several cities face problems of heavy influx, traffic accident and air and noise pollution.
Answer:
Urban transportation and connected with this problems are essential concerns in present day cities that concentrate a large number of some economic centers, buildings, constructions all strengthened and in some way maintained by transport systems. Urban areas due to the various different needs of urban liveliness are the centers of transport problems. It is vivid that the more rational transport system is organized in the city the higher urban rate of work is. It is important to transport work forces, customers, and goods to different places. Moreover, essential transport stations including bus stations, ports, airports are situated in the urban territory. So this factor adds to a particular range of issues.
The most essential urban problems include free parking and excessive off-street parking that influence the requirement and employment of transportation. Taking into consideration the fact that in urban areas some means of transport remain parked most of the time, availability of transport increased the necessity for parking space and this develops concerns connected with space consumption. Obviously, free parking allowing to leave an individual transport everywhere on the streets, and excessive off-street parking requirements that may include hours, space regulations might increase the use of transportation facilities of an individual type, that is transport congestion within urban areas as anyone can simply park ones’ cars elsewhere. And off-street parking is quite reasonable in the way of space saving but with excessive requirements appears to influence transportation problem the other way around. In reference to public transport, free parking and off-street parking decreases the demand for its use to a certain degree, as people can drive cars within urban areas without any worries about parking.
According to the Anthony Downs every driver looks for a more convenient, faster way of getting to the destination, choosing shorter routes and roads with higher speed allowed, including freeways, expressways and beltways and other limited-access shorter and faster roads. Thus many drivers choose these roads and converge on them. This often happens during peak hours when such roads are excessively loaded. If a convergence takes place drivers get to the destination spending the same time as driving non-direct routes, so certain rough equality occur in respect to both these types of routes. In the case of convergence drivers switch to non-limited access roads, and again the equality of travel time between the roads is reconstituted.
“Now, as Anthony Downs writes, suppose that the limited-access route undergoes a vast improvement — its four lanes are expanded to eight.” (28). In this case it can carry twice more cars than usually and now drivers get to the destinations faster and more convenient without any congestions. And this is exactly the situation when triple convergence principle occurs, as such convenience soon changes vise versa. The reasons (three different convergences) of the change are called by Downs as spatial convergence, time convergence, and modal convergence. After improvement of the expressway those driving non-limited access routes change their way of getting to the destination from longer routes to limited access ways, and those willing not to travel during peak hours (when actually convergence happens) on the limited-access ways get on the road during peak hours considering that improved expanded road is not overloaded (time convergence). Modal convergence occurs when those travelling using public transport are willing to drive by cars as this is more convenient after the improvement. All in all, here we can reflect on the impact of the Downs’ conception of the triple convergence principle. It is vivid, that according to this principle any improvements of traffic routes in order to solve some problems of urban transportation will not have an expected positive result, but still will end in triple convergence so the problem of traffic congestion will not be removed.