Public Transportation and Urban Form - Part 1
Added
to the confusion over the relative desirability of different urban forms is the
role of transportation engineering in influencing them. Many planners and public officials
believe that urban congestion can be reduced and other desirable public
purposes achieved by a combination of transportation-related strategies. One is
to make cities more compact, thereby reducing the need to travel by a conveyance
of any kind; another is to make transit more effective; a third is to restrict
the use ot the private automobile. The thrusts here would be first to improve
public transit facilities and service; and second, to favor transit by using
such strategies as
(1) giving priority in traffic,
(2) restructuring subsidies and using other pricing to make transit use financially attractive,
(3) setting high parking and other automobile fees,
(4) establishing automobile-free zones accessible only by transit or walking, and
(5) aggressively marketing transit.
(1) giving priority in traffic,
(2) restructuring subsidies and using other pricing to make transit use financially attractive,
(3) setting high parking and other automobile fees,
(4) establishing automobile-free zones accessible only by transit or walking, and
(5) aggressively marketing transit.
There
are those who are skeptical that approaches like these can reduce urban
congestion or make our cities denser. They point out that efforts to date have
been instituted primarily for political or prestige reasons, have taken a long
time to carry out,-' and may be ineffective if not counter productive, because
their effects are not understood. For example, a recent studv by the Transportation Engineering and Road Research Laboratory found that travel times to work in cities in
Europe had remained almost constant for 200 vr. This might be interpreted to
mean that, because of .the way people respond, better transportation by whatever
means will result in dispersion. Does this mean that congestion must be
maintained if cities are to remain compact? Furthermore, the notion that consequences
will be the same in different cities has been challenged. For example, it was
assumed that the effects of improved rail transit in Toronto would also apply
in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Toronto, heavy business activities and denser
residential development occurred in the zones of influence of the transit
stations. Because of many differences, including growth patterns, climate, governmental
structure, and greater competition from the private automobile on freeways,
these changes, when they occurred at all in San Francisco, were less marked.
Title Post: Public Transportation and Urban Form - Part 1
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Author: aditya
Rating: 100% based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews.
Author: aditya
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