Green Transportation: The Impact Of Economic Growth In Developing Countries

The impact of economic growth in developing countries is marked by the rapid increasing of vehicles in those countries. For example, both China and India show economic improvement in recent decades by showing real per capita income is more than doubled in India and more than fourfold in China between 1980 and 2005 (Pucher,et.al, 2007). Moreover, according to Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 2003; National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2005 data as cited in Pucher,et.al,2007, since 1990 China has increased tenfold of its motor vehicles and India has tripledIn contrast, the economic and vehicles development cannot be experienced equally among population. The poor population suffers for transport systems and land use, which means they still far away from adequate public transportation, less afford to buy their own vehicles, and pedestrian areas getting scarce. Due to that, they highly dependent on non motorized transport such as walking and riding bicycle, as a consequence, it wastes their travel times and they bear for heavy air

One of the reasons is to alleviate poverty. Poverty is a complex problem that cannot be solved by a single action, but managing transportation tends to be the biggest challenge and effective solution to break poverty chain spesifically in remote areas. Chilambe (2008) claims that with income less than $ 0.50 per day per person, the poor are far away from public facilities. In terms of economic perspective, remote areas people need adequate transport to take their agriculture products or goods to a wide range of markets or places. Unfortunately, because of the lack of public transit facilities, they use others alternative way of travelling such as using oxcart, donkey, or by walking or cycling. Consequently, not only they reach limited markets, but also it is a waste of travel time that drains their physical energy and moreover cause health