Traffic Congestion In Big Cities

Traffic congestion is a situation on road networks that happens as use increase, and its characteristics are slower speeds, longer trip time along with increased vehicular queueing and it occurs when the demand of traffic is great enough leading to the intersection between vehicles slows the speed of the traffic stream (Wikipedia 2014). Nowadays, with the development of our modern life, traffic congestion is getting worse than ever and it soon becomes one of the biggest concern of the world in the twenty-first century.

According to ‘Traffic Congestion and Reliability: Linking Solutions to Problems’ 2013, since 1982, the levels of traffic jams have increased in cities of all sizes leading to many negative impacts on our environment and economy.

With the development of modern society, people tend to use private cars than public transport because both economy and school system or even errands requires them to move at the same hours so they can be able to interact with each other (Downs 2014). Another reason is that private vehicles make people feel comfortable, give them ability to be more active, so they can follow their own schedule without having to depend on anybody. Along with this, privately owned means of transport provide them with privacy, faster speed, convenience in trip timing, flexibility for doing multiple tasks on one trip than almost on any types of public transit and in addiction, the rise of household incomes rise all over the world, more and more people change from slow method of movement which has low cost but contains many disadvantages to private cars and trucks (Downs 2004). Due to these reasons, the number of private transportation is rising dramatically in many big cities around the world. In Istanbul, there is a rapid growth in motor vehicles with an addition of 84,000 cars every year, more than eight-fold since 1980 (Gercek 2009). Accoding to the article ‘Reason for traffic jams’ 2010, since 1995, the number of private cars in Beijing has gone up over 30 percent in comparison with the average annual rate. In a recent road congestion report published by the Transport Advisory Committe,

Many years have passed but traffic jams in big cities still remain as one of the biggest problem of mankind. This issue not only brings about severe impact on economy growth of the state but also on the living standard in big cities. To deal with this matter, the government and city dwellers have to work together, otherwise, the situation will only become worse. By and large, the traffic congestion in big cities can not be solved overnight, it needs time and money to be