Traffic problems in city centres

Traffic problem has become a major problem in the word,it is obvious from the upsurge of private car use on the roads and the amount of problem they cause.Banning private cars in inner city is a blessing or a curse has sparked spirited debate.

Admittedly, one might have benefited a lot from one’s improved ability to move rapidly from one place to another space.Compared to other model, cars provide carring captivity and privacy,50% of commuters travel to work by car in London(Newman,1996).According to a survey,97,000 cars enter to central area between 7:30 am and 10:00 am.This may explain based on Figure3.3,it emphasize the fact that people spend money on cars reduced(exclude added costs) when travel the same trip,with 6% decreased from 1997 to 2004.However,the price of bus ticket and rail ticket has increased 10% and 4% respectively during the seven years.This may explain why more and more private cars are used.

However, the massive cars enter to inner city cause some serious problems.The most significant problem is traffic congestion and this is evident in every morning and evening in rush hours(Figure3.1).Moving on a congestion road, speeds of traffic reduced to 6-10 km/h(Newman,1996).As figure3.1 indicates,moving on a congestion road,travel time increased more than 4 minute when drivers travel 1 kilometre.Moreover, sluggish traffic flow leads to high fuel and maintenance costs(Schuitema,G 2007).For instance,the cost of congestion in London is at least €3.5 bn per annum(Bailly).

In addition,the growth in car use decreases the quality of life in urban areas due to exhaust gas and irritating noise,causing actual harm to people health.The WHO reports that in European more than 30% urban dwellers has been disturbed by irritating noise,and 5-15% of all citizens suffer noise disturbance(Bailly).The massive cars enter to central area takes the menace to the bicycle riders and pedestrians.The total number of deaths in Europe per year due to traffic accidents reached 45,000.Inadequate of parking car is another recognize consequence of the upsurge of private car enter to central area that result in many gardens and grasslands give way to construct traffic facilities like highway,avenues(Bailly).

Because of these negative effect some people argued that private car should be banned to enter to inner city.However,if banning car enter to inner city will cause another problems.For instance,in Tokyo,the commute rail system has a over-loaded of 300%of capacity in rush hours so that public transportation fail to cope with the increasing transportation demand(Schuitema,G 2007).So,banning private cars in inner city could reduce the number of transport,it is most unlikely to be an acceptable solution.

Statistic from the London Congestion charge Report are illustrated in Figure 3.1 which shows the problem of traffic delays has improved since implement charging during rush hours in the March of 2003. Figure3.1 shows the travel time saved about 1 minute compared with charging before.However, the development of national economy and the improvement of living standard,people afford to extra fee ,the problem picked up again in 2006.From then onward it fluctuated ,and the general trend was upwards.Therefore,an approach to control the number of private car use is focusing on the sales of the private cars(figure 3)and imposing of road tolls during rush hours which, as figure3.2 indicates,has reduced from 2002 to 2006 the number of cars entering to central area fell dramatically,with a 36% reduction,and vans ,lorries and other charging vehicle decreased by 13% respectively.In contract ,for no-charging vehicle rose sharply,such as the number of bus and coaches increased by 25%.Not only avoid common use of private car entering to center area but solve the under-use and serious wastage of the public transport in peak hours.

To sum up,private cars indeed bring lots of benefit for urban residents,banning private cars in inner city will cause another problem.So government need make some methods control the number of cars,such as to impose charges,to establish bus lane and to subsidy the public transport fares(Newman,P1996) and people should reduce unnecessary daily commuting by car.