BANNING CARS IN BIG CITIES?

Many cities around the world such as Beijing, Bangkok or London are faced with serious
air pollution which makes the living environment there harsher. Therefore, to tackle this
problem, the governments in some countries are proposing to ban all cars in their big
urban areas. Despite a number of possible benefits resulting from this policy, I am
against the notion that cars should be prohibited from cities centres.

When it comes to the drawbacks of the car-banning laws, flexibility is the most striking
issues. In big cities, it is obvious that there are different people who have a variety of
different destinations. Hence, the implementation of the policy may contribute to
various troublesomeness for those who want to reach places which are not on the
routes of public transportations.

Moreover, while the prohibition may not assure to help cutting down air pollution, it
probably gives rise to other environmental problems. First, when cars are totally banned
from cities, it complicates many questions: “How about the left-over cars?”, “How can
we deal with a number of cars in such big cities?” or “Are they thrown away or
recycled?”. What’s more, banning cars may reduce an amount of polluting gases, but
there will be no point in doing it when people switch to use other means of
transportations like motobikes. The situation would be even worse when the traffic jam
is added into the problems.

Many supporters of the prohibition could argue that banning cars from downtown areas
brings more benefits. Take the reduction of pollutants from cars as an exemple, the
atmosphere may be contaminated by the exhaust of cars, so banning cars definitely
makes the environment much cleaner. This argument sounds logical at first thought.
However, in reality, the amount of carbon dioxide from cars makes up only tiny
proportion compared to that of factories in the same city. In other words, the
industrialization has to take most of the blames for air pollution. Therefore, undergoing
this ban may not be as effective as it is thought, and it should not be implemented.

In comclusion, it is urgent to care about the environmental problems, but it is also

important to detemine exactly the ways to deal with those. Banning cars may seem to
be a reasonable measure. However, since the disadvantages does it bring outweigh the
benefits which it gives way to, the car interdict should not be imposed.