Research the Need for Sustainable Urban Transportation

THE NEED FOR SUSTAINABLE URBAN TRANSPORTATION
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Introduction
Transport systems play a critical role in the development of urban areas especially by providing access for people to key services such health care, education, markets, employment, recreation among others. In particular, effective transport systems in developing world cities are one of the most crucial prerequisites for achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Therefore, enhanced mobility and access is a necessity and not an option to such cities. Cities with enhanced transport modes in a well-integrated system have a higher likelihood of prospering and evolving as important centres of commerce, education, education, trade, industry, tourism and other services. It is also common that cities which rank top in urban quality of life surveys have high quality and well-developed transport systems; these well-defined systems usually prioritise non-motorised and public means of transport.
As cities across the globe continue to grow in terms of both size and population, they become active contributors to national GDPs. In many countries, cities are contributing as much as 80% or even more of the total GDPs of the respective countries. With increase in populations and also size, and the great and active role that the urban set ups play, there is an unmet demand for more and sustainable urban transportation – both passenger and freight. As the urban areas change in both size and population, so do the lifestyles as well as the living conditions of the urban population. In most cities, the developing cities included, the upper and middleclass population is rapidly growing owing to better incomes and occupational opportunities. As these populations rise, the ownership of private vehicles also increases. A case in point is the city of Bangkok which saw the number of registered private vehicles rise from 4,163,000 in 1999 to 5,614,294 in 2007. This rise in private vehicles represents a 35% increase, a significant rise in less than a decade.
Currently, urban transportation systems in most the developing cities are wanting – they are indeed far from ideal. In such urban set ups, the most visible challenge in the transport sector is congestion brought about by traffic jams. Indeed, traffic congestion is known to have dire consequences to a country’s GDP especially due to issues that cost national governments huge amounts of money. Such issues include: air pollution (as a result of smoke and fog [smog] and acidification), greenhouse gas emissions, road accidents, and noise.
In order to establish sustainable urban transport systems, there is need to establish an integrated and comprehensive strategy to decision-making and policy-making. The purpose or aim of creating such a strategy is to develop economically-viable, environment-friendly, and affordable transport systems. Political will also plays a great role in the overall improvement of urban transport policies. For example, city mayors or some other authorities can adopt tools to address the transport challenges and also apply them in their respective cities in an appropriate manner. Only when such a strategy is adopted will there be benefits and positive outcomes for all city populations.
Issues and Importance
One of the major goals of sustainable transport is to reduce the travel demand, particularly by motorized modes through the reduction of number of trips and trip lengths. The way developments are organized in a city impacts the trip lengths and number of trips that the city dwellers need to make to get access to people, goods, opportunities, and services. Organization of the urban space can greatly help in travel demand management. The trip lengths and number of trips in a dispersed sprawled city with low density development and with no spatial growth boundary will be much higher than in a city that is dense, has mixed use developments and some form of a spatial growth boundary. In the first type of development, city dwellers will greatly depend on their personal vehicles for mobility while in the latter type of development city dwellers may not need to depend on their personal vehicle so much as most of the destinations may be made accessible by walking or other non-motorized modes. To a great extent, the mobility needs can be satisfied by non-motorized transport in this type of dense and mixed use developments. Even if for some reason one decides to drive, it will still reduce the per capita distance traveled by vehicle. Dense developments can increase the transit ridership making the transit systems more viable. In addition, dense developments make it easier for public transit service providers to increase the percentage of people that they are able to serve.
Dense developments and mixed use developments are key to designing livable communities. Livable communities improve the quality of life because people walk and bike more making them healthy. It decreases total vehicle traveled miles, decreasing traffic congestion and air pollution. It decreases the amount of time people spend for travelling to go to work or other purposes. People can spend the saved time with their family or for recreation purposes.
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