Discuss the major transportation problems that exist in many urban areas and critically assess

the various attempts used by policy makers to address those problems.

Transportation is a vital part of the urban structure; it has the ability to efficiently move

people and products, and decreases physical distances where they are great. Thus, it urban

activity intensely depends on transportation network, dictating the location of land

development, work patterns and daily hustle of the city as businesses and citizens depend on

them for work and play. Without transportation infrastructure, cities would simply halt to a

stop. Even though urban transportation is so important to a city, it is not easy to implement –

many metropolises around the world host countless transit issues, catalyzing urban planners

and policy makers to scramble to find appropriate ways to solve these problems.

The cause of many of the biggest issues in urban transportation is undoubtedly car

dependency. Although the automobile has significantly made our lives easier, it has become

ubiquitous and completely reshaped the urban form. With the majority of the population

having a personal car, they could move further away from the city core without being

inconvenienced; this eventually led to massive waves of suburbanization across North America

and created intense levels of urban sprawl. To accommodate this growth, thralls of highways

were built to bring workers into the city which incubated severe problems.

Congestion is reality faced by many cities – when building highways, planners did not

always accurately predict its future usage and in many instances failed to accommodate the

supply of cars in successive decades. Especially now that urban sprawl is become increasingly

prevalent in major cities, the flood of rush hour traffic in and out of city cores has tremendously
overgrown the infrastructure’s carrying capacities. Traffic congestion majorly undermine the

productivity of the city; with employees spending more and more time in traffic gridlocks,

millions of dollars of revenue are lost every day. Here in Toronto, it is an extremely topical

issue: the arterial highways built to bring people into the city like the 401, DVP and 400 are

packed with congestion. It is a rare event to have a smooth ride into downtown Toronto.

The environment has as well suffered immensely at the hands of car dependency. With

millions of vehicles pumping noxious fumes into the atmosphere, the air pollution in major

cities and its suburbs is deplorable compared to rural areas. Of course, the impact this has on

public health is undeniable; illnesses like asthma, bronchitis and even lung cancer are frequent

in metropolitan areas. But this automobile culture also affects the wellbeing of urban dwellers

in many other ways. In the suburbs, street designs made to appeal to mass car ownership and

the sparsity of commercial and recreational activity makes cars a necessity of life; with an urban

form unconducive to pedestrian activity, the suburbs are often home to obesity, hypertension

and various other health defects. Moreover, more time spent on frustratingly gridlocked roads

can have a negative impact on one’s mental health; and, of course, with more cars on the road,

the rate of automobile accidents is high.

Opposite of car dependency, public transit options is another challenging facet of urban

transportation; although it may mitigate against the issues of car culture, it has many problems

of its own. One of the most central issues of public transit is the delicate relationship between

supply and demand. For the rush hour commute, many urban public transit systems experience

massive amount of crowding – the supply of vehicles simply cannot match the demand. On the
other hand, during off-peak hours, transit officials have a choice to make: with the demand

significantly lower, should they decrease the supply of vehicles, possibly inconveniencing those

who need the transit, or keep the supply at regular levels and possibly waste money? For all

these instances, funding is an important contributor to how they manifest. Specifically in

Toronto, the funding for the TTC has gone down over the past decades; therefore, crowding

and off-peak inadequacies are both experienced in the city, causing much dissatisfaction among

its residents.

With these issues affecting a majority of urban regions, planners and policy makers alike

have tried to come up with effective solutions address them. One of the earliest ideas was

called the supply fix transportation policy which mainly concerned itself with building more

infrastructures to combat traffic congestion. This approach, popularized in the 50s and 60s, is

very intuitive: if there are too many cars for the highway to support, simply expand that

highway. However, the supply fix way of thinking is not entirely accurate as expansion doesn’t

always relieve congestion. According to Down’s Law, it may actually worsen it: if two more

lanes are built on a highway, it will in fact attract more cars which will cause new waves of

congestion as their numbers surpass the new carrying capacity.

Though supply fix transportation policy may not be so accurate on its views of traffic, it

has a better perspective on public transit issues, emphasizing the importance of an affordable

and efficient system. For example, it lobbies for low enough fares for all to enjoy, multi-model

one ticket systems, a sufficient supply of vehicles and routes that reflect the public’s demand.

But by focusing on road expansion, the implementation of supply fix policies have actually
decreased public transit usage as more people turned to the car; this of course did nothing to

help the environmental and health problems it causes.

Another way of solving urban transit issues is with transportation systems management

which looks to strengthen the existing networks rather than build more infrastructure. It has a

significant advantage over supply fix transportation policy as its approaches are much easier to

implement, less costly and do not involve significant changes to the existing system.

Transportation systems management entails a variety of initiatives to increase the carrying

capacity of existing routes. For example, the addition of info technologies can update drivers

with real life data on traffic conditions, helping them to avoid congested areas; the incentivizing

of carpooling with designated HOV lanes; and pushing drivers to use public transit by using

strict by-laws and one way streets to make driving more difficult. The most successful

implementation of transportation systems management is in London with the London

Congestion Charge which puts a levy of $18 on vehicles entering a central zone of the city

between working hours of weekdays. Five years after this was added, congestion, traffic

accidents and air pollution all went down as people turned to use public transit, cycling and

walking, proving TSM to be highly successful if implemented in the right circumstances.

Transportation networks keep the city together. Workers depend on roads and public

transit to get to work, and businesses depend on the highways for their weekly deliveries –

without a smooth system, it would be very hard for urban areas to survive, let alone grow. In

North America, the necessity of car ownership is the biggest problem faced by the cities and its

suburbs; with increased pollution, decreased health and extreme congestion, public transit
seems like the most productive choice. However, the latter is far from perfect as lack of funding

has caused low supplies of vehicles during both rush and non-rush hours. With these in mind,

supply fix transportation policy and transportation systems management have attempted to

solve these issues. Yet, it is clear that transportation systems management is a more effect

solution – with Down’s Law affecting the efficacy of expanding infrastructures, making internal

changes, as with the London Congestion Charge, is a far better solution. But the supply fix

model’s ideas on public transit should not be discarded as quick; its system of lower fares,

transfers and vehicle supply are all necessary for a well-functioning network. Therefore, with

TSM reducing the traffic flow, and SFTP bettering public transit, urban transportation systems

can be enhanced dramatically.