Ideas to ease mounting traffic congestion
TRAFFIC congestion is a condition on road networks that occurs as use increases. It is characterized by a progressive reduction in traffic speeds, resulting in increases in journey times, fuel consumption, other operating costs and environmental pollution, as compared with an uninterrupted traffic flow.
One of the main causes of congestion is the intensive use and preference of private vehicles that have advantages in terms of facilitating personal mobility.
Private vehicles can give a sense of security and/or heightened status, especially in developing countries.
Mounting traffic congestion is impossible to avoid and is a serious and worsening problem that has been increasing throughout the world indicating that it is not getting any better.
Like many areas in Malaysia, the road congestion in Kota Kinabalu is aggravated by problems of road design and maintenance in the city, a style of driving which shows little respect for other road users, faulty information on traffic conditions, and unsuitable management by the insensitive authorities, which are often split up among a host of different bodies.
The cost of congestion is extremely high. According to conservative calculations, increasing the average speed of private car journeys by one km/hr and that of public transport by 0.5 km/hr would give a reduction in journey times and operating costs worth the equivalent of 0.1% of the gross domestic product (GDP).
The harmful effects of congestion are suffered by motorists, and also by public transport users who not only take longer time to travel from one place to another but also have to pay higher fares on account of congestion.
Similarly the city-dwellers are also adversely affected in their quality of life through such factors as air and noise pollution and the negative long-term impact on their health.
Understandably the real problem of traffic congestion is not primarily a problem, but rather the solution to our basic mobility problem, which is too many people desire to move at the same times each day simply because both the economy and school systems require that people work, go to school, and even run errands during about the same hours .That basic requirement cannot be altered without crippling our economy and society.
Another obvious reason of too many vehicles as oppose to availability of road space is that privately owned vehicles are more comfortable, faster, more private, more convenient in trip timing, and more flexible for doing multiple tasks on one trip than almost any form of public transit.
How should the problem be tackled? The speediness with which congestion can reach acute levels in big cities makes it essential for the authorities to take the right approach when seeking to adapt transport systems in this respect, both in the case of public transport and in that of private car use in problem areas.
The first concern should be to relieve the effects of congestion on those who have little or no responsibility for causing it, by:
• Promoting or recovering the road system’s quality of a public good by providing public transport with clear, unimpeded routes and giving it some degree of priority over other road users, including segregated bus lanes when appropriate in order that it should not be held up by congestion;
• Keeping the emission of pollutants under control; and
• Limiting congestion in order to prevent it from endangering the quality of life and sustainability of cities.
Reducing congestion has the result of reducing the emission of pollutants that contaminate the air, since in most cities throughout the world the transport system is one of the main culprits for atmospheric pollution. An integrated strategy for combating these two problems can therefore result in more efficient solutions than the application of isolated measures to combat each of them separately.
Combating congestion entails various amounts of costs. Some must be defrayed by the public bodies that are applying the measures; others affect the population in general, while those related with actions regarding demand affect motorists in particular.
Everything indicates that efforts should be made to apply a set of actions designed to affect both the supply of transport and the demand for it, in order to rationalize public road use.
It must be recognized that a style of personal mobility based essentially on the use of private cars is not sustainable in the long term, although this does not necessarily mean that it should be prohibited.
Private cars have many uses which make urban life easier, such as facilitating social life, shopping or travelling to distant destinations but using them every day to go to one’s place of work or study in areas of heavy traffic is a different matter.
It is therefore necessary to design policies and measures of a multidisciplinary nature which will make it possible to keep congestion under control, since it is not reasonable to think of eliminating it altogether. It would seem advisable to give priority to the following measures:
• Rectification of intersections
• Improvement of road markings and signs
• Rationalization of on-street parking
• Staggering of working hours
• Synchronization of traffic lights
• Reversibility of traffic flow direction in some main avenues
• Establishment of segregated bus lanes, together with the restructuring of the system of bus routes. At the same time, it is necessary to establish a longterm strategic vision of how the city should develop which will make it possible to harmonize the needs of mobility, growth and competitiveness, which are so necessary in the world of today.
This is a complex task, calling for high professional and leadership qualities on the part of the town planning and relevant transport authorities, and it could perhaps be made easier by the establishment of a single unified transport authority in city or metropolitan areas.
Keeping congestion under control is an ongoing, neverending task. Tools exist for this purpose, some of them more effective and some of them more readily accepted than others, but a set of measures which has the support of the local population is needed in order not to run the risk of succumbing in the face of the modern scourge of traffic congestion.