A Big Problem of Urbanization; Congestion

ISTANBUL BILGI UNIVERSITY ARCH 309 - PRODUCTION OF SPACE AND THE URBAN CONDITION 2018 FALL Final Assignment

A BIG PROBLEM OF URBANIZATION: CONGESTION MEHMET TAYLAN TOSUN 11695136

Urbanization is a considered concept that the growth and development of the urban concept which has a large group of subjects. Also, it shows the growth of people experience and where it will be continue in future can be thought at some urban situations. The important thing is every growth and development has not a decent future and when it comes to urbanization, it can bring along crucial problems about cities, lifetyles and other urban subjects. One of the main problem is the traffic congestion that blocking the entire urban transportation networks while this growth happening. There are factors that can solve the congestion as designing a good working transportation plan which is one of the fundemantal goals of city planning or solving the existing traffic congestion by the help of government and how can they. This essay will argue that how can the congestion in urban transportation network be solved while developing or after its reasons to born and the factors that be effected including human lifestyle, economy and a more general factor that pollution. Inaccurate transportation planning, over-population with migration, human lifestyle conditions can be the main results which causes the traffic congestion that be a big urbanization problem which have to be solved.

The reason why the urban traffic congestion consists while the city’s urbanization process, is from the unsuitable urban transportation planning. Government organization has a big role of transportation planning and land use connection and staff like planners and engineers. Cities and countries growing and developing continously so the rezoning and modifications on transportation plans demanded with the time. The important thing is the city’s suitability with its own land use plan¹.

Also the expandibility can be important for adding and rezoning new parcels and new parts of transportation plan. More flexible urban transportation plans borns more easily changeable and can be solved transportation networks in cities.

Over-population is an urban problem that have factors which cause. All of can be investigated seperately but the migration is a subject that effects the traffic congestion with different cultural, national people. There are reasons to immigrate to a certain location like work, political conditions, economy..etc. Generally, all of the migrants can be thought that over populated the city and directly effect the urban traffic congestion, but there are some diversities in migrant’s in city travel behaviours which researched for UK by Flavia Tsang, Charlene Rohr. Non-UK-born migrants travel less and mainly for work. “They tend to live inlarge cities and in the South East, and make more commute trips but fewer total trips per person.” Another type of migrant is that arrived new, use personal transportations which increase the congestion, less and prefer the public transportation like buses, underground or walking and cycling ². The usage of public transportation or walking/cycling by migrants are effecting the congestion more indirectly. They can create the people density bigger in public transportation near with native-born people but it can be solve with adding extra public tranformation systems and vehicles or enlarging them. So the direct factor of problem is migrants who use personal transportation which has low percentage.

Human lifestyle is a large subject that both reason and result for the urban traffic congestion.

Working hours are shaping the human life and daily hours. The crucial reason to congestion, most of the people in city go to work in morning and back from work at the same time, make accumulation in transportation. If people can go to work at different hours in a day, the congestion problem can be immensely reduced. To make a solution for this, there is a new work schedule system called “Flextime”. Some firms have already adopt the flextime and changed the working hours differently. “It is still too small to significantly reduce the level of congestion. This is because firms have little incentive to deviate from conventional fixed workschedule: productivity of a firm decreases by adopting the flextime.”³. Besides the working hours problem, people want to drive his/her own personal car rather than using public transportation because people feel more comfortable in personal cars. The reason behind this comfortability can be, public transformation vehicles being low-quality, neglected or overcrowded and only government can solve this problem with renewing and adding vehicles, promoting and encouraging people to use them more.

The urban traffic congestion while causing negative situations to human lifetyle, also damaging the environment, pollution. When the time wasted in traffic for a person in his/her entire life calculated, there are so displeasant datas can be seen. The accessibility in an urban city must not be difficult. Public transportation usage can decrease large amounts of congestion and even provides to save the economy for fuel purchase and reduce the pollution which carbon emission creates because of redundant use of cars. So there is a damaging connection in fuel consumption between economic costs and health cost because of pollution. “Average fuel economy represents the rate of consumption of fuel type during the day.”⁴, so these are the investigations about the total costs with displeasant datas like; “in 2013 traffic congestion cost Americans $124 billion in direct and indirect losses, this number will rise to $186 billion in 2030.”⁵. Conditions getting worse every year and there has to be solutions which government make. There are lots of options to encourage people for using public transport as decreasing public transportation fees and even free in some situations like freeing to only + 60 years-old people but it is not enough to decrease, also make people more believe in public transportation like promoting, increasing the quality, or showing people the total usage of fuel and created carbon emmisions like educate these things with more important attitudes more often. Also some limitations to using personal cars to transport can be a solution like implementing charges in London. “On February 17, 2003, London imposed a £5.00 daily charge (increased to £8.00 in July 2005) for driving or parking a vehicle on public roads within the congestion charging zone between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays.”⁶. Travelling time is another thing to people pushed from public transportation which affects human lifestyle. Personal cars are used for time earning because of not waiting the public transport vehicle to come or stopping at every stop for to other people get in⁷. To sum up, urban traffic congestion wasting time, energy, fuel,money, reducing health, are the main results that congestion creates and reducing these problems on directly governments hand.

In conclusion, one of the main big problem of urbanization is the traffic congestion affects human life style, financial and environmental problems which because of inaccurate urban transportation planning and its unsuitable infrastructures, over-population and not awareness to usage of public transportation or its quality. The government have to be organized for planning suitable transportation systems and networks, educate more people to aware of which factors affected by using redundant amount of personal cars and especially encourage people to use public transportation for reducing the vehicle numbers in urban network. Thus, urban traffic congestion problem can be dissappear in every urban zone in the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Deakin, E. (1987). Land use and transportation planning in response to congestion problems.

Berkeley: Dept. of City and Regional Planning, University of California, pp.79-81.

2. Tsang, F. and Rohr, C. (n.d.). Impact of migration on transport and congestion. p.39, 8.5.

3. Mun, S. and Yonekawa, M. (2000). Flextime, traffic congestion and urban productivity. p.2.

4. International Journal for Traffic and Transport Engineering, 2018, 8(2): 148 - 165 5. Guerrini, F. (2019). Traffic Congestion Costs Americans $124 Billion A Year, Report Says. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/2014/10/14/ traffic-congestion-costs-americans-124-billion-a-year-report-says/#4af23e7ec107 [Accessed 9 Jan. 2019].

6. Leape, Jonathan. 2006. “The London Congestion Charge.� Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20 (4): 159-160.

7. Balcombe, R. (2004). The demand for public transport. Crowthorne: TRL Limited, pp.69-70.