# data[].attributes.body
Commuters who are exposed to air pollution, like those riding in non-airconditioned vehicles such as jeepneys and motorcycles, double their health risk.

Being exposed to the daily hassles of traffic can lead to higher chronic stress.

If possible, adjust your schedule to avoid heavy rush hours. You will save time if you arrive at work an hour before or after the rush hours and leave accordingly.

Public transportation can get you to your destination on time while reducing the amount of traffic on the roads.

# data[].attributes.body
- According to many arguments, building more and bigger roads would actually increase the traffic problem, because it basically enables more people to use their private cars for commute.
- Technology can help reduce the traffic problem with smart parking, autonomous vehicles, etc..
- Public transportation helps prevent the traffic problem. It also provides social and economic benefits.
- There is also something called congestion pricing, which is helpful for decrease of roadway traffic, because it requires people to pay money when they cause a traffic congestion during important times such as rush hours.

# data[].attributes.body
1-Traffic is the vehicles moving on a public highway.

2-It is time-wasting, it is noisy and dangerous.

3-It occurs because of the drivers.

4-Getting driver's licence should not be easy, traffic penalties should be more deterrent.

# data[].attributes.body
-Traffic steals lots of time from our lives.
-It's happening because people aren't aware of the fact that we should reduce the usage of personal cars.
-It's a huge problem in crowded cities like Istanbul.

# data[].attributes.body
- Traffic congestion make people bitter and annoyed.
- Traffic is caused because of the abundance of car use.
- Traffic causes serious environmental pollution.
- Traffic is the one of the worst parts of living in a big city.

# data[].attributes.body
-We know that traffic is everywhere in our lives.
-We know that every year thousands die in traffic.
-We know that we should implant some solutions to traffic.
-We know that actually we are the traffic.
-We know that millions live in this big city who forms traffic.

# data[].attributes.body
-How does traffic affect people's health?
-What can we do to avoid traffic?
-Why is it important to reduce the usage of personal cars?

# data[].attributes.body
- Can building more roads prevent the traffic?
- How can technology help prevent the traffic problem?
- Do other ways of commuting work for the prevention of traffic?

# data[].attributes.body
1- What is the traffic?

2-What are the effects of the traffic congestion?

3- How does traffic congestion occur?

# data[].attributes.body
taken from Safety How

# data[].attributes.headline
The environmental impacts of cars, explained

# data[].attributes.subject
The environmental impacts of cars, explained

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Cars can convey a sense of freedom and movement, not to mention style and status. But they also can have a big impact on the planet. Here's a few key areas to consider.

Production and Destruction

Cars consume a lot of energy before they ever make it to the open road. Automotive production leaves a giant footprint because materials like steel, rubber, glass, plastics, paints, and many more must be created before a new ride is ready to roll.

Similarly, the end of a car's life doesn't mark the end of its environmental impact. Plastics, toxic battery acids, and other products may stay in the environment. Fortunately, junkyard pile-ups are becoming much smaller than they were in the past. About three-quarters of today's average car, including the bulk of a steel frame, can be recycled.

Production, recycling, and disposal costs to the environment are difficult to quantify and largely beyond the control of most consumers. It's also true that most of an automobile's environmental impact, perhaps 80 to 90 percent, will be due to fuel consumption and emissions of air pollution and greenhouse gases that climate scientists say are driving global warming. Fortunately, the level of that impact is very much under the control of the driver.

Fuel Costs

Petroleum products raise environmental red flags even before they are burned. Extracting them from the earth is an energy-intensive process that can damage local ecosystems. Shipping fuels can also consume a lot of energy, and creates an occasional environmental disaster such as an oil spill. As world demand rises, and unconventional fuel sources, such as oil sands, become more economically viable, the ecological impacts of petroleum extraction might also increase dramatically. That's one more reason why fuel efficiency is so important.

It's also partly why electric-powered vehicles can help reduce environmental impacts, because they don't burn fossil fuels.

Air Quality

Vehicles are America's biggest air quality compromisers, producing about one-third of all U.S. air pollution. The smog, carbon monoxide, and other toxins emitted by vehicles are especially troubling because they leave tailpipes at street level, where humans breathe the polluted air directly into their lungs. That can make auto emissions an even more immediate health concern than toxins emitted high in the sky by industrial smokestacks.

Infrastructure

Also difficult to quantify, another associated impact of cars is the building of roads to support them, as well as the urban sprawl that tends to follow in their wake. This issue can be difficult to tease out of other factors, such as population growth and resource consumption, but it is also not easily addressed by technological advancements like fuel efficiency and electric propulsion. Road building has a big impact on emissions and wildlife.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The environmental impacts of cars explained

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cars can convey a sense of freedom and movement, not to mention style and status. But they also can have a big impact on the planet. Here's a few key areas to consider. Cars consume a lot of energy before they ever make it to the open road.

# data[].attributes.headline
Traffic Congestion is infuriating to look at.

# data[].attributes.subject
Traffic Congestion is infuriating to look at.

# data[].attributes.body
Taken from Medium

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Traffic Has a Perfect Solution. Humans Won't Use It.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Causes Traffic Jams? - Instant Egghead #29

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's happened to all of us: we're cruising down the freeway and suddenly find ourselves stuck in a thick jam of other cars. Where did they come from? What caused the traffic mess? Scientific American editor Larry Greenemeier explains.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The traffic solution most cities haven't tried

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 10 Most Traffic Congested Cities of the World

# data[].attributes.headline
How ride-sharing can improve traffic, save money, and help the environment

# data[].attributes.subject
How ride-sharing can improve traffic, save money, and help the environment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Traffic is not just a nuisance for drivers: It's also a public health hazard and bad news for the economy.

Transportation studies put the annual cost of congestion at $160 billion, which includes 7 billion hours of time lost to sitting in traffic and an extra 3 billion gallons of fuel burned.

One way to improve traffic is through ride-sharing - and a new MIT study suggests that using carpooling options from companies like Uber and Lyft could reduce the number of vehicles on the road by a factor of three without significantly impacting travel time.

Led by Professor Daniela Rus, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), researchers developed an algorithm that found 3,000 four-passenger cars could serve 98 percent of taxi demand in New York City, with an average wait-time of only 2.7 minutes.

"Instead of transporting people one at a time, drivers could transport two to four people at once, resulting in fewer trips, in less time, to make the same amount of money," says Rus. "A system like this could allow drivers to work shorter shifts, while also creating less traffic, cleaner air, and shorter, less stressful commutes."

The team also found that 95 percent of demand would be covered by just 2,000 10-person vehicles, compared to the nearly 14,000 taxis that currently operate in New York City.

Using data from 3 million taxi rides, the new algorithm works in real-time to reroute cars based on incoming requests, and can also proactively send idle cars to areas with high demand - a step that speeds up service 20 percent, according to Rus.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time that scientists have been able to experimentally quantify the trade-off between fleet size, capacity, waiting time, travel delay, and operational costs for a range of vehicles, from taxis to vans and shuttles," says Rus. "What's more, the system is particularly suited to autonomous cars, since it can continuously reroute vehicles based on real-time requests."

Rus wrote an article about the work with former CSAIL postdoc Javier Alonso-Mora, Cornell University Assistant Professor Samitha Samaranayake, PhD student Alex Wallar, and MIT Professor Emilio Frazzoli. The article was published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.

While the concept of carpooling has been around for decades, it's only in the last two years that services such as Uber and Lyft have leveraged smartphone data in a way that has made ride-sharing a cheap, convenient option. (In 2015, Lyft reported that half of its San Francisco trips are carpools.)

However, existing approaches are still limited in their complexity. For example, some ride-sharing systems require that user B be on the way for user A, and need to have all the requests submitted before they can create a route.

In contrast, the new system allows requests to be rematched to different vehicles. It can also analyze a range of different types of vehicles to determine, say, where or when a 10-person van would be of the greatest benefit.

The system works by first creating a graph of all of the requests and all of the vehicles. It then creates a second graph of all possible trip combinations, and uses a method called "integer linear programming" to compute the best assignment of vehicles to trips.

After cars are assigned, the algorithm can then rebalance the remaining idle vehicles by sending them to higher-demand areas.

"A key challenge was to develop a real-time solution that considers the thousands of vehicles and requests at once," says Rus. "We can do this in our method because that first step enables us to understand and abstract the road network at a fine level of detail."

The final product is what Rus calls an "anytime optimal algorithm," which means that it gets better the more times you run it - and she says she's eager to see how much it can improve with further refinement.

"Ride-sharing services have enormous potential for positive societal impact with respect to congestion, pollution, and energy consumption," Rus says. "It's important that we as researchers do everything we can to explore ways to make these transportation systems as efficient and reliable as possible."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How ride-sharing can improve traffic, save money, and help the environment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An MIT study shows carpooling apps could reduce congestion by a factor of three while still serving the same number of people. Led by Daniela Rus, director of MIT CSAIL, researchers developed an algorithm that found 3,000 four-passenger cars could serve 98 percent of taxi demand in New York City, with an average wait-time of only 2.7 minutes.

# data[].attributes.headline
20+ Extraordinary Reasons Why You Should Use Public Transport

# data[].attributes.subject
20+ Extraordinary Reasons Why You Should Use Public Transport

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Public transportation, while many view it as not entirely comfortable as compared to the use of a personal car, it's one of the most amazing ways to travel and enjoy your journey. As much as private flights, taxis or cars give you more independence, there are limitless reasons why the use of public transport pays off. Here at least 20+ extraordinary reasons why you should use public transportation when you travel.

According to Wikipedia,
"Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, or mass transit) is a shared passenger-transport service which is available for use by the general public, as distinct from modes such as taxicab, carpooling, hired buses, and transportation network companies, which are not shared by the general public without private arrangement."
1. You'll contribute towards easing congestion. Most of the road traffic congestions witnessed in our roads across various cities around the world are all attributed to the use of private vehicles and the notion of everyone wanting to use their own personal cars for privacy and comfort. At the same time, we keep complaining of traffic jams.

If we are serious about addressing the problem, then we should often opt for public transport. A recent research indicated that a full carriage bus in a public transport system is equivalent to about 55 cars on the road with one occupant. So, if we could all use public transport, we'll probably be decongesting more the 50 cars on the road.

2. You help in reducing the overall environmental greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas pollution is ever on the rise and that's the reason states, organizations, and environmentalists advocate for emission reduction techniques. By using public transport, you'll be able to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions by more than half. Research has proved that only three to eight people on a public transport bus are able to cut emissions by half compared to an individual commuting in a personal car by himself or herself.

3. You'll have lots of time to people watch. Public transportation is used by people from diverse backgrounds with varied cultures, norms and ways of living. If you opt for public transportation, it means you'll have the chance to people watch and even get to learn the nature of different people.

4. Meet new people. Public transportation is used by diverse people and again, there is no need for over-emphasizing on this point. The odds are that you'll be able to interact with lots of people from different cultures if you use public transport as opposed to traveling private.

5. Public transportation allows you to relax. With public transportation, you'll be able to have your own time, take a nap, avoid the road rage, and get out of the pressures of driving your own private car. During the commute, you can also read or just enjoy the view which will help in boosting your dopamine hormones and reducing your stress levels.

Furthermore, using public transport to travel helps you unwind. At the end of your public transportation journey, you'll definitely have moments to recall and reflect on some of the best moments in your life.

6. You'll save money. Using public transport can save you up to four times the money you use commuting in your private or personal car. The regular use of your personal car will require the costs of maintenance and other additional charges such as parking fees, emission tickets, and speeding fines. By using public transport, you'll be able to save all the money directed to such miscellaneous expenses of using a personal vehicle.

7. Improve your personal health. The use of public transport will ensure you have to walk more often between the stations and places you'll be boarding the buses, planes or trains. With such kind of an activity, you are ensured of some extra physical activity in your frequent travel routines.

The payoff includes improved personal health in terms of exercising your muscles, crucial organs and even reducing your stress levels. Walking in particular has been proven to relax the mind and improve one's mental health. Consequently, walking in between your public transport routines aids in improving your mental health and physical well-being.

8. You'll reduce the need for fossil fuels and the depletion of natural resources. Train, Bus, ferry and tram travel as pointed out by TransLink considerably saves on the dependence on fossil fuel reserves as well as supplies which continue to destroy natural environments. It therefore means that the use of public transport saves on at least twice the fossil fuel energy used in personal cars. One full train saves fossil fuel that would have been used by more than 600 cars on the road.

9. You'll definitely make new and interesting friends. Public transport is used by thousands and diverse people across the society as opposed to private travel which only means you are traveling by yourself or your relatives. If you use public transport, you have all the room to make friends and enjoy the ride by meeting interesting new people.

10. Quicker travel. You may not believe this as true but public transportation systems have dedicated travel routes. This makes it quicker to reach travel destinations as compared to travelling alone in a personal car. For instance, a cross country train trip takes much more less time to reach the various defined destinations compared to the time it takes to reach the same destination in your own personal car.

11. There are various options in the public transport system. In public transport, we have more than one option to use. You can either opt for the bus, train, ferry or plane. Each of the options has their benefits and demerits but with all factors considered, public transport will definitely be more fulfilling. Regardless, if you were to use any of the options, your last priority should be the plane as it generates more carbon dioxide.

12. Public transport has fare saver tickets. One in every major season or holiday must have public transport offers on ticket discounts. This is an advantage you'll only get to enjoy if you frequently use public transport. Also, the some of the ticket discounts comes inclusive of return fares which reduce your overall spending on travel.

13. It makes you plan your trip hence reduce overall wastage. If you have to use public transport, you'll have to plan your travel in advance. What most people do not know is that by planning your travel, it makes you a frugal traveler. In other words, it will help in reducing your expenses and overall wastage in general because you'll not be overwhelmed with last minute purchase or rushes which may have you incur additional travel costs.

14. It will help you be a change agent. The world is currently moving toward being environmentally conscious and for this reason; you can join the rest of the world's agents for change by simply using public transport. As advocated by environmentalists as well as climate change experts, the use of public transport particularly trains, buses, and ferries can fundamentally help in cutting greenhouse gases by half. You will also be helping in reducing the devastating environmental impacts.

15. The views are better with public transport. The rail lines and buses oftentimes connect the most important sights of cities and provide the traveler with the opportunity to view the most exclusive settings such as parks, hills and forests. By using public transport, you'll be able to have some of the most memorable and rewarding views.

16. You get to witness how quirky bus drivers can be! This is an awesome experience especially for those who are inclined towards learning belief systems and just out to have fun. If you use public bus transport, you'll be able to notice some of the quirky beliefs and personalities of the drivers. For instance, some bus drivers may have the interior of the buses creatively painted with very bright and weird colors. Some of them even bring their religion into the buses by having personalized shrines such as the honoring Buddha, Jesus or Virgin Mary. Some may also bring family pictures.

17. Most of the world travels by public transport. Commuting using public transport reminds us that most people in the world can't afford personal cars and it will even encourage your personal commitment towards environmental sustainability goals. It will remind you that there are other people on the planet who can't really afford some of the machines contributing to massive environmental degradation globally.

18. It will help your cities become better placed. Environmentalist and urban planners have it that public transport helps cities reduce traffic congestion and the overall level of pollution. This means that if you use public transport, you'll be reducing congestion as well as pollution within and around your city. Why not contribute to making your city a better place by using public transport.

19. It promotes local city tourism. Again, most people are usually discouraged by the level of congestion in major cities because it leads to traffic and air pollution. Congestion due to huge traffic and private vehicles makes maneuvering within the city tricky thus limiting the number of people who would wish to visit congested cities.

Therefore, if most people were to use public transport in major cities, it would aid in decongestion and encourage city tourism. Tourists may also feel much safer and free to use public transport systems such as trains and buses because it gives them the chance to meet new and interesting people from different cultures.

20. Buses and trains are much safer compared to personal vehicles. Personal vehicle accidents are estimated to contribute to higher fatality rates than bus or train related accidents. More than 40, 0000 deaths and many more injuries annually are due to car accidents alone globally. By traveling in public transport, you significantly reduce your threat to road carnages.

21. Areas with public transport have better security. Evidence based research from criminology reports indicate that areas with public transport have improved overall security and few cases of crimes. Public transport areas are actually well lit and manned by patrol as well as police officers thereby reducing crime rates and improving security by more than 80 percent.

About Rinkesh

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
20+ Extraordinary Reasons Why You Should Use Public Transport - Conserve Energy Future

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Public transportation, while many view it as not entirely comfortable as compared to the use of a personal car, it's one of the most amazing ways to travel and enjoy your journey. As much as private flights, taxis or cars give you more independence, there are limitless reasons why the use of public transport pays off.

# data[].attributes.headline
Interventions to reduce traffic congestion

# data[].attributes.subject
Interventions to reduce traffic congestion

# data[].attributes.body
Optimise traffic-light management

Use CCTV to monitor road conditions

Enforce existing road traffic laws

Improve perceptions of buses

Extend residents’ parking zones

Charge for workplace parking

Improve cycling infrastructure

Improve bus services

Develop and refine park-and-ride

Use Inbound Flow Control

Rationalise distribution and deliveries

Existing rail network

Light rail

Strategic Road Network resilience

Road pricing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A version of this paper was submitted by Smarter Cambridge Transport to the House of Commons Transport Committee's Urban Congestion Inquiry in January 2017. A printable PDF version with information about Smarter Cambridge Transport is available here.

Executive Summary
We present here some ideas for reducing congestion and pollution in urban areas, applicable in the UK and worldwide. The ideas were developed in the context of the Greater Cambridge area (roughly Cambridge city and South Cambridgeshire district), which is typical of many UK towns and cities. The region has an urban population under 150,000, surrounded by a dispersed rural population.
Congestion-reduction measures can be thought of as falling into two categories: temporary and virtuous.

Temporary measures free up road capacity that is soon filled by induced demand: people adapt their lifestyles to prevailing road conditions. Such measures are therefore worth pursuing only if they either buy time or lay the foundations for more radical interventions. We take a quick look at measures in this category that should not be considered as solutions - at least not in isolation.

Virtuous measures start a feedback loop that induces more and more people to make a modal shift away from driving. Making a bus service more convenient or cheaper will increase patronage, which means that the service can be run more frequently and for longer hours, making it convenient and attractive to more people. These are the changes transport policy must support.

Interventions to reduce traffic congestion

Modern, sophisticated initiatives that are better than typical 'big ideas' include:

Optimise traffic-light management

Use CCTV to monitor road conditions

Enforce existing road traffic laws

Improve perceptions of buses

Extend residents' parking zones

Charge for workplace parking

Improve cycling infrastructure

Improve bus services

Develop and refine park-and-ride

Use Inbound Flow Control

Rationalise distribution and deliveries

Existing rail network

Light rail

Strategic Road Network resilience

Road pricing

As can be seen, these begin with interventions requiring only a low level of capital investment, before moving on to those which require an increasing degree of public and/or private sector investment. We will look at each in turn, before finishing by looking at the role of transport in health and welfare and providing some concluding thoughts.

The one-hit solution

It is often incorrectly suggested that congestion may be solved with one big idea, such as:

Widen roads

Narrow roads

Add bus lanes

Remove bus lanes

Build tunnels

Build a new ring road

Build a light rail network

Switch off traffic lights

Ban cycling

Ban cars from city centres

Close through-routes to private vehicles

Close car parks

Build more car parks

Build more park-and-rides

Make buses free

Make park-and-ride free

Introduce a congestion charge/road pricing

None of these can deliver a complete solution, and most of them provide only temporary relief until induced demand fills up the road space once more. Road pricing (which we cover later) is the nearest to a one-hit solution, but it still needs to be paired with big improvements to public and active transport options.

Heavy-engineering measures, such as bus lanes, street-running trams, and tunnelling, can attract support from politicians, mindful of their legacy. But such projects typically require years of highly disruptive work, destroy fragile streetscapes, and undermine the viability of other public transport options. Widening a road to add a bus lane makes it more difficult for pedestrians to cross, and may compromise the quality of cycling infrastructure that can be accommodated. A tram line or park-and-ride can cannibalise patronage of rural bus services. Business cases need to be built up carefully, and only after 'softer' measures have been implemented, or at least modelled in detail.

For those who believe that cycling causes congestion, the Cambridge Cycling Campaign has a mischievous suggestion: let's have a no-cycle day! Experience is much more persuasive than theory.

We need only look to cities in Europe that manage congestion effectively, such as Copenhagen, Freiburg and Groningen: they employ a wide range of complementary measures, carefully balancing the needs of residents, commuters, businesses, visitors and tourists.

Low capital investment

1. Optimise traffic-light management

Urban Traffic Management Control (UTMC) systems such as SCOOT can be very effective in maximising road capacity by varying the timing of traffic lights to match demand in real time. When lights are all co-ordinated responsively to demand, incidences of 'blocking back' (vehicles stuck in junctions) leading to gridlock can be minimised. Traffic planners can also prepare and model programs to cope with specific scenarios (such as an incident on an arterial road), which can then be loaded into the UTMC immediately they're needed.

UTMC can help prioritise buses by synchronising light phases to the movements of buses. Modern systems can even see whether a bus is running on or behind schedule, and vary the amount of priority it gives accordingly (e.g. by limiting green time from cross roads).

The non-linearity of the relationship between traffic 'flow' and 'delay' means that relatively small reductions in flow (say 10-15%) can result in very large reductions in congestion. In Cambridge this is experienced as a 'half term effect': flow reductions of under 15% during school holidays lead to an almost congestion-free peak hour.

2. Use CCTV to monitor road conditions

Use of CCTV at junctions allows traffic managers to see breakdowns, collisions and other causes of congestion. Combined with good communication systems with Highways England, the police and major road users (such as airports, train stations, retail parks), this can ensure traffic managers receive advance warning of issues that will impact their network.

Any CCTV equipment installed should comply with the minimum standards required to support legal enforcement.

3. Enforce existing road traffic laws

Illegal parking, waiting, loading/unloading obstructs traffic flow, reduces capacity at junctions, holds up buses, and increases danger to those walking or cycling. Blocking junctions, which is illegal where there's a yellow box, can cause gridlock across a wide area of the road network.

Driving at an inappropriate speed, jumping red lights, or driving through restricted areas all contribute to fatalities, injuries and an unwillingness for people to walk or cycle, or to allow their children to do so unaccompanied.

There is currently an acceptance that it's OK for delivery vehicles to park up on the pavement outside a shop, even when there's a safer alternative. The convenience of the delivery driver outweighs convenience and safety of pedestrians, wheelchair users and those with infant buggies.

The government is currently reviewing the law around pavement parking. It may decide to extend to the rest of the country the ban that exists in London, but that will still require enforcement. Penalty Charge Notices currently given for illegal unloading are seen simply as a cost of doing business, so perhaps an escalating penalty for repeat offences should be considered.

Enablement of Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act 2004 would allow civil enforcement of a wide range of minor moving vehicle offences, which currently the police have neither the resources nor incentives to enforce.

Government and local authorities need to 'sell' enforcement as a positive effort to help responsible road users, and not as a 'war on motorists'.

4. Improve perceptions of buses

There is a perception (partly class-related) that trams are more attractive than buses. Rather than pander to this bias - potentially at huge expense - it makes sense to examine why the perception exists. Some of the commonly-cited objections are:

Pollution from diesel engines is a danger to health, and the smell and noise is offensive.
All-electric buses, with quiet, battery-powered motors, will be commonplace within a decade, so this advantage of trams will diminish.

Tickets are typically purchased before boarding a tram, or there is contactless payment.
Transport for London has proven there is no reason for buses to be different.

Trams typically have multi-door boarding.
Two- and three-door bus models are available, bus operators tend to prefer single-door buses because they have higher seating capacity and it's easier to prevent fare dodging. The advantage of having more doors, especially once ticketing is streamlined, is that dwell times can be greatly reduced, allowing buses to run more frequently, increasing the hourly capacity, for only a small increase in overhead.

Tram routes are easier to understand and find.
Consistent, clear maps and signage, real-time passenger information displays, and online apps, like CityMapper, can make bus travel much more accessible. Naming routes can help too.

The ride quality is smoother on trams, making it more comfortable and easier to read and work on a laptop/tablet.
The ride quality of a bus is largely determined by the quality of the road: roads on bus routes could be rebuilt to the same standards as a tramway, reducing wear and tear and improving the fuel economy for all vehicles.

The design and décor of trams is often seen to be more attractive.
The challenge is for bus manufacturers to up their game!

Bus windows often stream with condensation in the winter.
Buses should be fitted with a heat-recovery ventilation system, which extracts warm moist air and transfers the heat to cool, dry air drawn in from outside.

Buses often pick up more dirt from the road in wet weather.
This can be addressed by running buses through a washer during off-peak periods.

Requiring bus drivers to collect fares, verify tickets and passes, account for all money taken, and spot fare dodgers adds considerable stress to their job, and increases the dwell time at stops. Instead, operators should employ specialist revenue protection officers with powers to impose on-the-spot fines. CCTV on board buses provides a means to spot and target repeat offenders.

5. Extend residents' parking zones

In most towns and cities, only streets in the centre have comprehensive parking controls, typically including a mix of residents' parking and pay-and-display or limited-wait bays. Congestion, high parking charges and increasing fares on public transport are encouraging more and more people to drive and park outside controlled parking zones. They then walk, or sometimes cycle, the rest of the way.

This is exacerbating congestion and pollution in cities as more commuters drive around looking for parking spaces. This in turn makes walking and cycling less pleasant and safe for residents. It also leaves no space for visitors (including those providing health and personal care services) to park, and for delivery vehicles to stop safely.

The answer is to extend parking controls much further out from the centre of the city in a co-ordinated way. Adding new residents' parking zones in a piecemeal fashion simply pushes problems to a new area. By co-ordinating the expansion it's possible to have one-hour residents' parking zones, which can be patrolled by one or two civil enforcement officers. A patrol route can be designed through consecutive one-hour restrictions: 10-11am in one area, 11-noon in the next, noon-1pm in the next, and so on. Combined with ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) technology, enforcement can be quick and cheap.

The challenge with introducing new parking controls is political: to gain support from those who see themselves facing additional costs and inconvenience rather than benefits. The steps to gaining popular buy-in are:

Collect data on commuter parking and its impacts

Identify local problems that parking controls can solve and include these at an early stage in scheme proposals

Minimise costs to residents through efficient enforcement using appropriate technology, such as virtual permits

Offer a trial (using experimental traffic regulation orders) of controversial aspects of a scheme. Undertake in advance to remove or change the scheme if there is less than 50% support shown in a consultation held after, say, nine months.

As part of a general review of parking allocation, space should be allocated for short-stay parking for visitors and loading bays for deliveries.

6. Charge for workplace parking

Free parking at employment sites attracts traffic and therefore contributes indirectly to congestion. Nottingham has led the way in introducing a workplace parking levy (WPL). The effect on congestion is relatively small, but significant. More importantly it incentivises employers to help their employees find alternative ways to get to work. Measures may include:

Re-allocate car parking for cycle parking

Set up or join a car-share scheme

Pay for taxis as a back-up when car-sharing does not work out

Provide financial assistance (e.g. loans) to buy train or bus season tickets

Build a changing room and showers

Assist with subsidising public bus services to extend the hours of operation

Where there is no (nearly) suitable public bus service, run a works bus.

WPL also incentivises employers to re-evaluate their land use. There are clear economic and environmental benefits to be had from businesses releasing city land currently used for parking and developing it instead for new offices or housing.

WPL is politically easier to introduce than a congestion charge and can provide local authorities with a revenue stream to invest in public and active transport options.

Medium capital investment

7. Improve cycling infrastructure

"Build it and they will come" is as true of cycle paths as of roads - as long as they provide a continuous connection between places that people want to travel between, without dangerous junctions or road crossings.

The keys to good design that is attractive to people of all ages and abilities are:

Build protected cycle lanes, with as much separation as possible from busy roads and, where possible, from pedestrians

Design segregated crossings at busy junctions, where potential conflicts between cars, cycles and pedestrians are reduced to a minimum

Introduce the Turning the Corner simplification of the Highway Code and underlying law (essentially, turning vehicles and cycles must give way to all cars, cycles and pedestrians proceeding straight on), as proposed by British Cycling, the AA and RAC Foundation

Create and sign cut-throughs to create networks of quiet routes that connect up residential areas, schools, libraries, shops and other amenities

Remove physical obstacles, especially if they require people to dismount. Research by academic Rachel Aldred has found that many people with impaired mobility get around on bicycles and tricycles but are unable to negotiate steps.

8. Improve bus services

Buses are seeing a sustained reduction in patronage since 2008. There is a vicious circle of subsidy withdrawal leading to service reductions, which make services less convenient, so patronage falls, requiring further reductions in service.

Bus operators try to make their services commercially viable by designing circuitous routes that pass close to as many houses as possible. This can make a 5 mile trip take the best part of an hour, which is particularly unattractive to commuters.

The answer, at least at peak times, is to run express services that follow a direct route with widely-spaced stops, more like a train service. Those stops would include the travel hubs discussed below in section 9.

At off-peak times, there needs to be more flexibility about how buses are routed for greater efficiency. For instance, on routes served by P&R and rural services, the rural service could replace some of the P&R services by calling in en route.
Interchanging
A single rural bus service can serve only a small minority of people whose journeys happens to begin and end close to the bus route. Interchanging to other services is essential to making public transport work for more people. The travel hubs described above can provide an interchange between express and traditional rural, stopping services (which become, in effect, feeder services).

Within cities, transport planners need to design bus routes around facilitating interchanging. The typical model is hub-and-spoke: all buses come into a central bus station, where passengers can change to another bus. Often though, this central location is highly congested, with little scope for building new bus priority measures.

Another model is ring-and-spoke, where buses circulate around an inner ring road. This effectively makes it one big hub: you can hop off anywhere and catch a bus headed to any other part of the city. Oldenburg in Germany uses this model.
Works buses
Where a company puts on a works bus service, this will often compete with and undermine the viability of public services. Therefore it is far preferable (and probably cheaper) for the company instead to subsidise public services for the hours or frequency needed to make it serviceable for their workers. Hopefully the Bus Services Bill will make this kind of arrangement easier to organise.

9. Develop and refine park-and-ride

Park-and-ride (P&R) is now an accepted traffic management tool. However research has identified two unwanted side effects:

Competition with rural bus services, where people who have a car prefer to use P&R rather than a rural bus service. (The 'abstraction' rate of people switching from rural bus and train services was about 20% at one Cambridge P&R site.) This almost inevitably leads to a reduction in rural bus services, hurting those (disproportionately disadvantaged) people who depend on them

As P&Rs become more popular, congestion occurs on the approach roads, delaying buses and other traffic (including vehicles not heading for the city).

The model needs refining, in part by catering differently to local and longer-distance traffic.

Those travelling from the local area would be served best by rapid bus services from close to home. To make this work, buses need to run more like trains or coaches. Rather than calling at multiple road-side stops, buses need to call at one, well-connected travel hub in each rural centre along the route.

Those travelling from further afield will continue to be served best by P&R. They are unlikely to be tempted to abandon their cars far away from the city so sites need to be located close to the city edge. But, in order to minimise congestion, sites also need to be located closed to exits from the strategic road network, with dedicated lanes to funnel cars rapidly into the P&R.
Travel hubs
Travel hubs in rural centres should be well-connected to the surrounding homes and amenities by foot- and cycleways. Local buses (where these are commercially viable) and community transport should provide links to the wider area.

A large car park would be neither desirable nor necessary at most such hubs: many busy train stations have little parking provision, with most people walking, cycling or being dropped off. But what space is allocated for cars could be used for communal events, such as a farmers' market, craft fair, and by providers of mobile community services (e.g. county library, NHS health screening, police and fire service contact points, and CAB advice centres).
Parking costs
In order to incentivise use of public transport, there needs to be a hierarchy of cost to travel into the city, where it is (typically) most expensive to drive and park in the centre, less expensive to drive and use P&R, and even less expensive to take a bus from close to home.

The cost of building and maintaining P&R sites are substantial and should be borne by users rather than local taxpayers. Public money should be used to subsidise public transport, which is available to everyone, rather than parking, which is available only to those who are able to drive and can afford a car.

10. Use Inbound Flow control

Inbound Flow Control (our term for 'gating' or 'queue relocation') is a powerful technique for managing morning peak traffic flows efficiently, and for providing bus priority without the need to build bus lanes right into a city.

The idea is that some of the traffic that would normally sit in a queue somewhere in the city is held back temporarily at the edge. Here there is typically land of relatively low environmental or heritage value that may be used to widen the road to queue traffic and provide a bypass lane for buses (and emergency services and potentially other authorised vehicles).

Clear signage in advance of the queuing area should inform drivers of expected queuing times and direct them to the nearest park-and-ride.

Vehicles are released from the 'gate' at a rate that matches the road's outflow rate, i.e. the rate at which vehicles are able to disperse. This ensures that all traffic flows freely beyond the gate. This obviates the need for bus lanes, and improves journey times for all road users.

11. Rationalise distribution and deliveries

Efforts to reduce car traffic in cities are being undone by growth in commercial traffic. The largest growth in traffic in cities is in LGVs (up 13.5% from 2012 to 2015) used to deliver goods and groceries ordered online to homes, and just-in-time deliveries to stores.

The solution is to use consolidation and redistribution depots and many fewer vehicles making the 'last mile' deliveries and collections in the city. This is the General Post Office model pre-deregulation.

City authorities should look to encourage companies wishing to set up and run the depots, and find ways to incentivise logistics companies to start using them. They should also explore ways to restrict the number of delivery companies operating in the city, perhaps by creating access restrictions for "authorised vehicles only", and setting fees and conditions for gaining access licence. In this way, authorities can also incentivise use of low-emission vehicles.

Once depots and 'last mile' delivery firms are established, the cost savings will themselves be a strong incentive, so local authorities will be able to step back.

Cambridge is one of the few cities to have an established and successful cycle logistics business delivering small packets and parcels from a depot close to a junction on the A14.

Changes in legislation that permit the use of larger electric-assist cargo bikes have helped. Local authorities can also help by ensuring that cycle routes are sufficiently wide to accommodate cargo bikes, starting with a review of gates, pinch points and other paraphernalia that does less for safety than was once believed.

High capital investment

12. Existing rail network

There is considerable potential in the existing heavy rail network to run metro-style services in cities like Cambridge. Rail is a true mass transit mode, able to move many thousands of people an hour efficiently. Where rail infrastructure exists already, and could serve sizeable new populations, the business case can be strong for adding stations, and for increasing line capacity where this limits provision of more frequent, local services.
Parking at stations
In most cities, train stations are at the centre of a highly congested road network. It therefore makes sense to gradually reduce the number of car parking spaces provided, reducing congestion and freeing up some of the most valuable land for development.

Providing high quality, secure cycle parking and short-term bike hire services at stations reduces the need for car parking and the volume of private and hire car traffic accessing the station.

Stations outside cities and close to the strategic road network make ideal locations for park-and-ride or parkway stations. These can then serve a wider rural population that would otherwise drive into the city.

13. Light rail

Light rail can be popular and politically attractive, but the cost is high and in most cases improving bus services will be have a greater benefit than installing street-running trams.

Installation of the rails and power supply (either overhead lines or inductive loops below the road surface) is very expensive and highly disruptive

In existing urban areas, the space required will typically compromise the space available for other transport modes, including walking and cycling

People travelling from beyond the tram network will still have to take a bus, and possibly change to the tram en route

Rail has to avoid steep gradients and sharp bends, ruling out routes that buses can manage perfectly well

Rail-based transport cannot adapt to temporary disruptions, e.g. road works, traffic incidents, street-based events

Tram lines are a hazard to people cycling.

Rail-based transport is appropriate where:

There is a need to move large volumes of people (in the order of 10,000 per hour) between major centres (e.g. a transport hub and the city centre)

It is possible to fully-segregate the line to enable services to run fast, reliability and safely

There is a large new development, which can be designed around the transport infrastructure.

14. Strategic Road Network resilience

Incidents and works on the strategic road network often cause large volumes of traffic to divert onto city and village roads, creating long delays for local traffic, including bus services. Highways England should make it a higher priority to make the strategic road network more resilient, i.e. better able to adapt to partial or complete closure of a road.

The benefits of investment in junctions to improve connectivity should be measured in terms both of reducing journey times and delays on the strategic road network, and also on reducing congestion and delays that spill over onto the local road network.

Around Cambridge there is a triangle of dual carriageway roads: M11, A14 and A11. In theory, if one side of the triangle is blocked, traffic could be diverted around the other two sides, minimising delays on the local road network. To make theory a practical reality, the junctions at each end of the A11 require additional connections, to the M11 north, and A14 west.

The Girton Interchange, where the A14, M11 and A428 meet, also offers limited connectivity. This results in congestion on local roads: through traffic must use a local road (A1303) to move between the A428 and M11; and traffic coming from the east destined for the north-west of Cambridge must leave the A14 early and drive through the north of the city. Additional connectivity at the Girton Interchange would reduce traffic and congestion on local roads, both by reducing diversions of traffic onto local roads, and by enabling the creation of a park-and-ride site at a near perfect location (see Point 9 above).

15. Road pricing

There is no doubt that road pricing can work: in Singapore, for instance, a network of 'gates' that charge a toll that varies in relation to demand successfully keeps a lid on congestion. But there is a complex debate to be had around designing and implementing road pricing: the social, political and technical challenges are huge and will take years to resolve. That process needs to start now.

Part of the urgency stems from the fact that government stands to lose in the region of £30bn of revenue from fuel duty and VAT: electricity, currently VATable at 5%, is replacing petrol and diesel as the fuel for motor vehicles. That transition will reach a tipping point almost certainly within the next five years, when the total cost of ownership of all-electric vehicles will be lower than for petrol/diesel vehicles. From that point on, almost all cars sold will be all-electric.

The most obvious parallel is with cameras: the transition from film to digital started slowly and reached a tipping point in the 2000s, after which film camera sales fell rapidly.

There will be strong pressure to scrap the petrol and diesel vehicles already on the road when we take seriously the health costs of the harmful pollution they cause. The WHO estimates that 40,000 deaths per year are attributable to pollution (which compares with 1,800 in road collisions). So the decline in the fuel duty revenue could be precipitous once it starts to accelerate.

Fuel duty is aligned to energy consumption and therefore roughly to distance travelled and use of infrastructure. At its most basic, road pricing can emulate this. By varying charges by time of day, road pricing can reduce congestion. But the opportunity is much bigger than that: it is to design a tax that is also socially progressive.

A system based only on ability or willingness to pay would be regressive. Even if income from road pricing is invested in improving public transport, there will always be gaps leaving many people with no option but to drive, owing to personal circumstances or the nature of their work. Many socially valuable services are provided by people who are paid minimal wages, e.g. health and social care workers, or whose services need to be affordable by the low paid, e.g. boiler servicing and food delivery for the home-bound. In our view, road pricing needs to be designed, with wide public consultation, to take into account:

Physical cost (building, repairing and renewing roads and associated infrastructure)

Environmental cost (pollution, noise, vibration caused)

Social cost (e.g. in contributing to congestion, delaying other drivers)

Social benefit the driver is providing (e.g. a health worker)

The driver's need to use a vehicle (e.g. health-related or no access to public transport)

Commercial benefit derived from driving, especially at peak times

There will also need to be a debate around the infrastructure needed. There's the monitoring system: should we fit every vehicle with a 'smart meter' that communicates with a central system, or install a network of ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) cameras? And there's the billing system: should this be centralised and run by government, or de-centralised and run by private companies or local authorities?

If the system is not centralised (perhaps because of privacy concerns), then there must at least be nationally-agreed standards to ensure a seamless experience for drivers. And if it is centralised, local authorities must be able to set local premiums to manage localised demand and raise income (much in the way that parish, city and district councils can set their own Council Tax precept). Councils could also consider rebating national road pricing fees where they want to encourage regeneration of deprived areas.

Health and welfare

There needs to be much greater consideration given to the health aspects of transport. Reducing obesity and improving mental health requires for most people requires building more physical activity into their daily routines. That means walking and cycling must be attractive, convenient and safe for many more people.

The grave danger to health of being exposed to pollution, especially from diesel engines, is only now becoming apparent. We must prioritise reducing people's exposure by reducing congestion, traffic volumes and incentivising the transition to zero-emissions vehicles.

Planting trees between highways and homes has been shown to reduce the amount of pollution people are exposed to in their homes. It is also linked with greater willingness to walk and improved mental health.

Social isolation is a major concern for those who cannot drive or afford a car: the elderly, disabled, poor and unemployed. It is generally recognised that public (or community) transport is a lifeline for them to maintain existing relationships. But there is a much wider benefit for everyone in walking, cycling, and taking public transport, in that it provides many more opportunities for social interaction than driving. Good public realm for walking and cycling, and public transport that works for everyone make communities stronger and more cohesive.

Concluding thoughts

The name of the game is 'modal shift'. Long-term reductions in congestion require people to switch to more sustainable, space-efficient modes of transport: walking, cycling, buses, trams and trains. Though some relief may be gained from increasing the efficiency and capacity of the road network, this will always be short-term: the iron law of induced demand will see to that. People will simply adapt to prevailing road conditions, choosing whichever route is quickest, and increasing driving distances as road speeds increase.

To achieve modal shift in towns and cities we need to invest in improving sustainable transport modes and, at the same time, reduce capacity, access and convenience of urban road networks for motor vehicles. This requires a revolution in transport planning: no longer can the motor vehicle be king of the city. We must design urban roads and streets to be attractive and convenient places to walk, cycle and use public transport. Where compromise is necessary, because of lack of space or safety concerns, it is motor vehicles that must give way: diverted away from sensitive streets or slowed down.

For this not to be portrayed as a "war on motorists", we must find ways to filter motor vehicles so as to deter people from driving who have alternatives, but without severely inconveniencing those who, for personal or business reasons, have no alternative. Transport professionals must adjust the way they refer to people, not as 'motorists' or 'cyclists', but as people who drive, cycle, walk, take a bus, etc. Change is not a zero-sum game: someone's gain is not necessarily someone else's loss: we all stand to gain from having more travel options.

Government and local authorities need to invest in developing and articulating a positive vision of what low-car cities will look like. It is essential that they involve urban and landscape designers from the outset, and not bring them in at the end of engineering-led schemes merely to 'add lipstick'.
Smarter Cambridge Transport publishes an article on transport planning every week.
To join our free email list, click here.
This paper was submitted by Smarter Cambridge Transport to the UK Government's Urban Congestion Enquiry in January 2017. A printable PDF version with further information about Smarter Cambridge Transport is available here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reducing Traffic Congestion and Pollution in Urban Areas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A round-up of measures to reduce motor traffic congestion and air pollution, presented to the UK Government's Urban Congestion Enquiry.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Stress, pollution, fatigue: How traffic jams affect your health

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dealing with heavy traffic does not just make people late for work or dinner; several studies show that living with constant traffic congestion also has negative consequences on your health. Current Philippine trending info on popular art, culture, society, movie, music reviews, travel destinations, food, classic literature, bestseller book lists, modern, retro design, health, wellness, exercise, fitness, people, events, beauty, makeup tips, latest fashion, clothing, fads.

# data[].attributes.body
Read more on University of California Science

# data[].attributes.headline
How to Avoid Contributing to Traffic Congestion

# data[].attributes.subject
How to Avoid Contributing to Traffic Congestion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
avoid contributing to traffic congestion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Avoid Contributing to Traffic Congestion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you drive frequently, traffic congestion can be a major daily headache. With a few simple driving techniques, however, you can be part of the solution. Being a safe driver can help speed up the flow of traffic, but you can also take...

# data[].attributes.headline
TRAFFIC CONGESTION: WHY IT’S INCREASING AND HOW TO REDUCE IT

# data[].attributes.subject
TRAFFIC CONGESTION: WHY IT’S INCREASING AND HOW TO REDUCE IT

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The statistics show that each of us is driving less. So why do our roads feel more jammed up? Why does it take longer to get anywhere? And what can we do about it? Some politicians have begun blaming Traffic Calming and bicycle lanes for the backups; saying that Complete Streets and pedestrian bulb-outs are making roads less safe because less accessible for emergency vehicles. Is there any truth to this? More fundamentally, is car congestion a problem to be solved or a solution to a problem?

A 2013 report from US PIRG showed that the average number of miles driven by the average American has been falling for about a decade, through economic booms and busts, and was down to mid-1990s levels. Millennials, our nation's largest-ever generational cohort, are using transit and bikes more and taking fewer and shorter car trips, resulting in a 23% drop in the average number of miles driven. The percentage of high school seniors with a driver's license fell 12%. Walkable city life is increasingly attractive to both young people and retiring baby boomers. The rise of on-line shopping, social media, and telecommuting has meant fewer quick car trips.

Despite these trends, as every driver knows, our roads are increasingly congested - not everywhere or all the time but for increasing periods at a growing number of key intersections and road segments. Congestion radically reduces the volume of traffic passing through a road section, the through-put, thereby creating a negative feedback loop that creates more backups. It's estimated that USA drivers spend about 14.5 million hours every day stuck in traffic. Congestion not only costs us time - in 2011 Boston drivers collectively lost about 137 million hours, or about 53 hours per commuter per year - but also fuel and therefore pollution, health, and money. Not to mention frustration and occasionally murderous road rage. Although we Bostonians believe we've got it worst, car congestion seems to be clogging roads like kudzu in nearly every city in the country - and, by some reports, across the globe.

It's true that a new report has said that the first four months of 2015 has set a new record in total vehicle miles in the US - up nearly 32 billion since the previous high in 2007, pushing gas consumption as well as prices upward. Lower gasoline prices and a recovering economy (consumer spending in May, 2015 had the highest month jump in six years) are two reasons for the jump, probably augmented by the continuing lack of viable alternatives to car driving for many people. But a four-month blip is not enough to explain years of delays.

We do know some things that are contributing to the larger problem - land use patterns and population growth are the most important. The low-rise dense designs that make older urban areas walkable and transit-efficient is illegal to build in many places today due to parking requirements, anti-mixed use and other zoning requirements, etc.

We know some things that may appear to be causative but actually aren't - making roads safer for pedestrians and bicyclists, prioritizing bus and trolley traffic, even reducing the average speed of cars.

We know some things that (counterintuitively) do not help reduce congestion - most notably building more roads or adding lanes, all of which eventually fill up as our additional drivers decide to move into the new space.

And we know some things that do improve the situation, but usually only when they are applied as a group rather than singularly - improving road use efficiency using technology (signal timing, access controls, central monitoring) and other methods (car pools, HOV lanes, car sharing, perhaps driverless cars), increasing alternative options ( transit both regional and downtown, bicycling), changing land-use patterns (Smart-Growth style transit-orientated development), requiring corporate and municipal Transportation Demand Management programs (incentives to not drive alone or to not drive at all), and (most effective of all) congestion pricing of various kinds.

What is needed is the cultural and political willingness to accept this knowledge and act upon it - while also coming to grips with the reality that the continuing imbalance of potential drivers to current or any plausible future amounts of road space means that congestion is a permanent part of a car-based reality.

----------
WHERE THE CARS COME FROM
We tend to think of congestion as something that happens on a stretch of road, occurring when the number of cars is higher than the road's capacity, forcing everyone into stop-and-go movement. But on-road jams are even more likely to be back-ups from pinch-points - intersections with poor signal timing, lane merging, accidents, rubber-necking when going past something interesting, and other constrictions - that suddenly create rolling waves of braking and over-capacity density along an otherwise functional road. One analysis says that up to 40% of congestion is caused by "bottlenecks," about 25% by "traffic incidents," and 10% by "work zones."

The US population has increased by about 33% over the past fifty years. However, as our national wealth has increased the number of registered cars grew nearly three times as much, 90%, during the same period. Even though we are each driving less, there are so many more of us that the total annual vehicle miles traveled is about 130% higher than in 1970. On the other hand, despite a recent 50% surge in new highway construction (the resulting disruption is another reason for today's perception of increased backups) the total number of road miles has grown by only 6% during the past half century - and may even shrink in the future.

Not only are there more of us, we are more spread out; instead of building up, we built out. Its dumb growth, or at least wasteful. From 1960 to 2010 metropolitan areas in the USA tripled in size to 912,992 square miles, approximately a quarter of the total land area. The process has pushed development farther into the hinterlands leaving decay behind it, like a sprawling forest fire that has consumed a quarter of the country's land area. The trend has continued, population-weighted population density fell by 16 people per square mile between 2000 and 2010, while in metropolitan areas it fell by an enormous 405 people per square mile despite the urbanization trend (one theory is that incoming city dwellers are more affluent and demand more space per person). Many people do not want to drive and do not even want to live where they need a car, but have no alternative because the only housing they can afford is in an auto-oriented suburb.

However, our employment and shopping centers are more concentrated. So our our road system is inherently designed like a watershed - lots of small brooks collecting into bigger streams and then into raging rivers. As our population expands into once rural regions the car traffic pressure on collector roads and bridges leading to large employment, shopping, and recreation centers inevitably increases. Ironically, the recent trend towards urbanization doesn't automatically help the situation: to the extent that the new city dwellers are still driving, their presence puts even more concentrated pressure on key intersections and other choke points.
FLOODING THE CANALS
The core problem is that there are simply many more people potentially able to drive than our roads have the capacity to handle given our current land use patterns based around a hierarchical road system. Congestion can be seen as a way to ration our limited road space - a solution to the problem of over demand. In market terms, the solution would be to increase the supply: in transportation terms that means build more roads. But, as with so many market-based solutions, this ignores the side effects, the externalities.

Once upon a time, increasing road capacity, and therefore traffic volume, was believed to lead to so much economic growth that potential side effects were irrelevant. However, we've now learned that the externalities of highway construction are enormous - devastated neighborhoods, economic decline, and escalating health problems in urban areas; water problems, decreasing regional food self-sufficiency, and sprawl in rural areas. The side effects of increasing road capacity are so bad that several states, most notably environmentally-challenged California, have begun exploring no longer using the impact on car Level of Service (LOS) as a criteria for evaluating new developments or establishing mitigation requirements. (The emerging alternative is to require developers to pay for ways to handle the increased number of trips the project will create, but allow lower-cost non-car modes to be counted towards the total.)

But even if we had the space and the money to create the unimaginable amount of new pavement needed to clear the roads, it would be a short-term victory. Like a gas expanding to fill all available space until the pressure equalizes across the system, drivers will change their plans to take advantage of any quicker and easier routes created by the new capacity. If the cost to the driver in time and frustration of current congestion is reduced more people will choose to drive. In a process called " triple convergence " any improvement in driving conditions on a particular route will attract drivers "from (a) other times, (b) other routes, or (c) other modes of travel." The third factor explains why building new roads also creates more drivers - which then hastens the filling up of the new facility. And fixing one part of a congested system simply moves the problem to the next segment, as the traffic pileups on either side of the smooth-flowing Big Dig tunnels prove.

(Good news: the "if you build it they will come" dynamic also works in reverse - "if you take it away they go away" through a "triple deconverging" process back to other times, routes, or modes making cars disappear from the transportation system to a degree that current traffic prediction models consistently underestimate.)
INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY
One solution is to make better use of the roads we have. High Tech firms are salivating at the opportunity to sell " Intelligent Transport Systems" (ITS) as part of even bigger " smart city " systems. Embedded sensors. Video monitoring cameras. Adjustable traffic signals that change the timing or divert people into alternative routes. These are extraordinarily expensive, require enormously skilled operational refinements and maintenance after installation, and lock cities up into endless (and also expensive) upgrading. At the price of personal privacy, new apps take car location and speed and let drivers detour. Driverless cars may someday allow cars to be more closely packed on roads without causing accidents.

Reducing the number of cars on the road is a complementary strategy. The spread of car-sharing services, both for-profit and publicly owned, has gone along with the reduction in car ownership. Some studies indicate that each shared car takes between 10 and 25 cars off the road. Public transit is even more powerful. The Texas A&M Transportation Institute has found that without public transit, USA car drivers would have an additional 785 million hours of delay each year. In Boston, the MBTA saved regional drivers nearly 32.9 million hours of road stall in 2010. The number of cars one full bus eliminates from the road is so large that increasing the amount, effectiveness, and attraction of public transit is a powerful strategy even if it requires creating reserved bus (and HOV) lanes during rush hours.

Counterintuitively, in addition to reducing our still-appalling level of road kill, a similar traffic improvement effect comes from Traffic Calming (using a variety of techniques to slow cars to a desired speed) and Complete Streets (giving equal priority to facilities for transit vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians as well as cars and trucks). A pedestrian is killed every 2 hours in this country, a moral outrage that the growing number of Vision Zero campaigns are beginning to take seriously. These safety-enhancing strategies are often blamed for congestion because they visible reduce road widths, reduce speeds, and sometimes eliminate lanes. But study after study shows that these first impressions are not only wrong, but backward, at least in urban areas. In New York City, for example, the creation of protected bike lanes has also created space for left-turn pockets, which means turning cars no longer block the through lanes and traffic flow has actually improved despite the loss of a lane.

Even when creating left-turn lanes isn't possible, improving safety generally helps car flow. First, by making non-car modes safer and more attractive, these strategies reduce car traffic and free up parking - partly by facilitating mode shifts among current residents but probably also by tilting the mix of new residents towards people looking for a place where they can walk or bike rather than drive. (Reducing VMT is a particularly effective strategy for reducing car-related injuries - the fewer miles people drive the fewer people get hurt. This is the opposite of bicycle riding, where increasing number lowers the rate of injury and whose public health benefit increases along with increased participation.)

Second, high speed driving in cities is usually the result of driver impatience and seldom lowers the time it takes to get through any trip of more than a few blocks. Urban areas simply have too many obstructions, the high speed creates danger where it happens but it can't last long, it's simply "racing to the next red light." In Somerville, the top speed on Beacon Street was 30 mph but during rush hour the average speed was a little above 10 mph. This speed had little connection to the width of the road or of a crosswalk. Using road space for improved pedestrian and bicycle safety has little impact.

Third, the key to traffic efficiency is throughput, the total number of cars that can get through a particular distance in a set amount of time, and just like Aesop told us "slow and steady wins the race." The trick is sophisticated traffic-signal timing that varies according to the traffic load on multiple streets at different times of day - something that ITS might facilitate but that few cities currently have. These systems also malfunction without constant maintenance of both software and fixtures, a level of skill and expense often beyond the capacities of municipal DPW's. And a malfunctioning signal can lead to more congestion than having no signal at all. But reducing theoretical road capacity is not the issue: Cambridge, for example, cut three lanes out of Mass Ave in Central Square to install bike lanes and while traffic is definitely slower the total number of vehicles passing through per hour has not been reduced. The current installation of a protected bike lane on Western Ave. in Cambridge will similarly have negligible effect on throughput compared with signal timing (although the construction process has driven everyone crazy).
RAISING THE COST
Making it more expensive to drive will also reduce traffic, but it is not as straightforward as first appears. European countries have hugely higher levels of sales tax on car purchases, annual excise tax for ownership (as a surrogate for usage), and per-gallon gasoline taxes - all of which does provide a market-based incentive to not own or use a car to the extent possible. A complementary approach is to limit the number and raise the cost of parking spots in congested areas. But unless these are offset by a parallel but not directly connected annual tax credit, these costs fall heaviest on those who have no choice other than using a car - and on the low-income subset in particular. Still, raising the cost of cars and driving while reducing its convenience is a powerful "nudge." Unfortunately, there is little public appetite for this self-inflicted pain as shown by the recent overwhelming passage of a Massachusetts ballot question canceling the proposed increase of gas taxes to keep up with inflation.

Another car-use fee is tolls. There is a lot of discussion these days about letting private firms build new roads and recoup their costs through tolls, such as the proposed third Cape Cod bridge or the dangerous conversion of the Route 3 breakdown lane to a toll road. If the cost of the tolls is high enough, these plans would create an open road for those able and willing to pay. However, it would have absolutely no positive effect on everyone else. To the extent that the new roads reduce traffic on the regular roads, the "triple convergence" effect would simply attract additional drivers to fill the new space; the non-toll roads would be just as jammed as before. The net effect would be to use valuable land for the benefit of the rich, perhaps enticing even more of them to drive and thereby reducing their influencial support for mass transit. (An unintended consequence of this approach is to increase the "export" of money out of the local economy: traffic on Virginia's Routes 495 and 95 move faster than the adjoining "free" lanes, and are free for carpools, but the money goes to an Australian company.)

The only way to avoid this is to limit privatization to currently existing roads - requiring private firms to "buy out" public ownership and invest as much as needed to upgrade the road quality in exchange for the right to charge a regulated level of tolls on all or some lanes. This would also hurt those with the fewest choices and least able to pay, but because it wouldn't create any new road capacity it wouldn't attract any more drivers on to the roads - in fact, it might push some percentage of current drivers to find other routes or other methods of travel (or to change where they live or where they work). However, even better than turning lanes into toll roads would be turning them into express bus (and carpool) priority lanes. As Enrique Penalosa says, "Congestion is the signal that you need to expand public transit." A high quality bus rapid transit system would provide a non-regressive alternative to using a car.
REDUCING THE DEMAND
The most fundamental solution to congestion is changing land use patterns, both in the city and in the suburbs. The young professionals now adding to the gentrification of many neighborhoods will eventually have families and want more space (as well as better schools). The only choice they're currently given is sprawling auto-centric homes far from the city. Design of suburban neighborhoods does not need to be car-centric, they can be walkable and still provide space and privacy, as seen in many early 1900's streetcar suburbs that are designed to be walkable to everyday needs and transit. What about duplexes, triplexes, row-houses with a common interior-block yard, mother-in-law units on single-family lots? Many models other than single-family home offer open space, a significant level of privacy, and also build community, increase safety, and make transit and walking much more viable in new developments and for a changing demographic in post-war neighborhoods.
CHANGING THE GAME
All these strategies help reduce congestion, but only a bit and only if they are done together. The reason for their weakness is the "triple convergence" problem: to the extent they reduce car traffic the huge pool of potential drivers looking for the most convenient, quickest, and cost-effective method of travel will divert themselves into the suddenly attractive road.

However, these strategies are vitally important because they lay the foundation for the strategies that do have deeper impact: changing drivers' decision-making context through Transportation Demand Management (TDM) programs and raising the general cost of driving through tax policies or Congestion Pricing. TDM is typically focused on destination owners - employers and shopping centers - and tends to be somewhat more progressive; Congestion pricing tends to be user focused and therefore regressive. The key point, however, is that the impact on the driver of these market-based approaches stay in effect even as road traffic lowers, continuing to tilt traveler's decision-making away from driving alone.

The Cambridge TDM program emerged from an EPA air quality suit against the city and focuses on new commercial development. Any project that adds more than 5 parking spots has to also set up a program to actively encourage non-car commuting (subsidized transit passes, bike parking, car pools, etc.) and forbids providing the typical driving inducements (free or even any parking, etc.) Mostly as a result while the booming Kendal Square High-Tech and Bio-Tech area has seen a 40% increase in commercial and institutional space over the past decade, vehicle counts have fallen by as much as 14% on major streets.

Also proven effective is congestion pricing - charging a fee to use certain roads or enter certain areas depending on the level of demand: the more people who want to use a road at a particular time the higher the toll. It shifts traffic by 10% to 30%. Because upper income people tend to drive more and be less sensitive to tolls, it has been claimed that the imposition of congestion pricing counterintuitively reduces the relative tax burden on lower income families. (Providing additional tax credits can also relieve the burden while maintaining the congestion-reducing impact of the use-tax.)
GETTING USED TO IT
Car owners have been expressing their anger at having to slow down for others and at congestion almost since cars first appeared in our streets about a century ago. We don't like slowing down. We don't like waiting. I remember my parents complaining about traffic in the 1950s.

But so long as our population increases and we are wealthy enough for large numbers of people to afford cars, and so long as our land use continues to force a dispersed population to assemble themselves in a relatively few locations to work and shop, the capacity of our roads will not be able to expand enough to prevent increasing levels of congestion at pinch-points of various kinds.

The best we can do is create attractive alternatives to single-occupancy travel and to the use of cars for short trips. Mass transit is the foundation. Car-share, bicycling, walking, and the like are the necessary finishing touches. And then we have to have the political and personal will to raise the cost of driving and parking - in time, convenience, flexibility, and money - relative to these alternatives. The good news is that reducing congestion in this way helps raise the money needed for the alternatives but also has a long list of equally valuable positive side effects from reduced pollution and greenhouse gas emissions to losing less money to non-local fuel suppliers, to increasing safety, to making our communities and region more livable.

It might be worth the effort.

------
Thanks to Jason DeGray, Alex Epstein, and Jamie Young for comments on earlier drafts. All remaining errors and opinions are, of course, my responsibility. RECENT RELATED POSTS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Traffic Congestion: Why It's Increasing and How To Reduce It

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The statistics show that each of us is driving less. So why do our roads feel more jammed up? Why does it take longer to get anywhere? And what can we do about it? Some politicians have begun blaming Traffic Calming and bicycle lanes for the backups; saying that Complete Streets and pedestrian bulb-outs are making roads less safe because less accessible for emergency vehicles.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Traffic congestion has become the scourge of the modern world, or at least one of the scourges of the modern world.

Anybody who must negotiate the traffic in Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Galway or Waterford during the increasingly extended rush hours would realise just how much of a hell the experience is.

The private car was meant to have been a liberator of people, but the reality is that many now find themselves encased in a steel jail for large parts of their lives.

The costs of traffic congestion are significant and diverse.

They include the amount of time lost sitting in traffic and the damage to the environment from the carbon and other emissions from vehicles idling and going nowhere very fast are clear, but the impact on the quality of life is obviously more difficult to quantify.

Whatever way one looks at it, traffic congestion is no good for anybody and there needs to be a joined up and coherent approach to addressing it.

It will never be solved, but at least the correct cocktail of measures might just help alleviate it somewhat.

Lest we beat ourselves up too much, it is worth reminding ourselves that this problem is not unique to Ireland.

A visit to cities such as San Francisco, New York, London, Istanbul or Paris, to name but a few, clearly demonstrates that traffic congestion is a global phenomenon.

The reality is that the big issue all over the world is that the global population is growing too quickly. Also, in a variety of areas - including water infrastructure; healthcare systems; food production; and physical infrastructure such as roads - the design of our towns and cities are just not designed for, or capable of, coping with the growing size of the world population.

This week I took part in a radio debate on the introduction of congestion charges, with an environmentalist and a representative of a motorist's lobby group.

The motoring interest accused both of us of trying to demonise the motorist. If that is the defensive attitude taken, then we have no possibility of making progress in improving the quality of life for all our citizens, including motorists let it be said.

I am fundamentally in favour of congestion charges, because I believe the only real and effective way that the behaviour can be changed in a positive direction is through the utilisation of financial instruments.

Witness the eminently successful plastic bag levy of a few years back. However, the design of such a congestion charge would obviously be of the utmost importance.

Taking account of the number of people in the vehicle and the emissions status of the vehicle should be taken into consideration.

However, the overall objective should be to reduce the number of private vehicles entering certain urban areas, and making sure that those which do, have the highest possible environmental credentials.

However, it is also vital that other options are made available such as proper cycling infrastructure, and the environmentally-friendly public transport options.

Remote working will also have to be part of the solution.

I cannot really understand why there is so much opposition and unwillingness, in policymaking circles, to congestion charges.

They are used in many cities, with London the most obvious and proximate example. By many important measures, the congestion charge in London has been a success: The number of vehicles driving into Central London is a quarter lower than a decade ago.

The charge has been particularly successful at deterring personal use cars from entering Central London; the number of private cars entering the zone fell 39% between 2002 and 2014.

Yet, competition for space on London's streets remains high. While the congestion charge discouraged some drivers, the number of private hire vehicles is up.

With private hire vehicles exempt from paying the congestion charge, this leaves London without an effective means of managing the numbers of them on the capital's roads on weekdays.

London's busy roads also reflect lifestyle changes: data shows that people are making fewer personal transit trips, and there are more deliveries and more cab rides.

The congestion charge in London needs to be extended and made more expensive to make it work even better.

Extend it, for example, to the thousands of Uber drivers and, in the process, get people back on to buses and trains.

It is in everybody's interest to alleviate congestion and vested interest grounds cannot be allowed stand in the way of positive change for society at large.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Congestion charge is the only way to free cities of traffic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Traffic congestion has become the scourge of the modern world, or at least one of the scourges of the modern world. Anybody who must negotiate the traffic in Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Galway or Waterford during the increasingly extended rush hours would realise just how much of a hell the experience is.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A really entertaining view from our hotel room window. :-) I could have filmed that scene at any other time of the day or night. Istanbul, Turkey, late afternoon of October 12, 2015

# data[].attributes.body
Istanbul is the second most congested city in the World.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The INRIX, an economy and business research center, has released its 2018 Global Traffic Scorecard. Prepared based on analyses of 220 cities, the report has shown that İstanbul is the second most congested city.

According to the report, while the most congested city has been Moscow, the capital of Russia, it has been followed by the capital of Colombia, Bogota, the capital of Mexico, Mexico City and the capital of Brazil, São Paulo.

As for the five cities with the lowest density of traffic congestion, they are Waterloo in Canada, Wichita and Tulsa in the US, Cordoba in Spain and Saskatoon in Canada.

The report has also shown that while the traffic congestion in Moscow has decreased by 12 percent in comparison with the previous report, congestion in İstanbul has increased by 6 percent.

Drivers stuck in traffic for 6.5 days in a year

When the hours lost in traffic congestion in a year are considered, İstanbul ranks 32nd among the 201 other cities of the world. A driver in İstanbul spends an average of 157 hours stuck in traffic, which means that drivers in the city spend almost 6.5 days a year in traffic.

The capital of Colombia, Bogota ranks first in this category with 272 hours.

While the capital of Turkey, Ankara ranks 11th in the list, the Aegean province of İzmir is the 12th city with the highest number of hours lost in traffic.

They said, "We ranked 20th"

Mustafa Sünnetçi, the Deputy Director General of Department of Transportation of İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality, made a statement on September 25, 2018 and stated that according to the data of INRIX, the traffic congestion in İstanbul has eased.

Sünnetçi further claimed that İstanbul, which previously ranked 20th among 220 cities in terms of traffic congestion, was now the 17th city in that regard.

However, when the reports released by the INRIX are considered, while Turkey ranked 3rd among 220 cities in 2017, it became the second most congested city in 2018. (EKN/SD)
* Photograph: AA - Archive

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
İstanbul Second Most Congested City in the World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
According to the 2018 Global Traffic Scorecard released by the INRIX, İstanbul has ranked second in the world after Moscow in terms of traffic congestion. The report has shown that drivers in İstanbul spend almost 6.5 days a year in traffic.