Traffic congestion is associated with pronounced problems in some cities and towns. This had led some to believe that building more roads is the sole solution. While acknowledging the reasons for this thinking, I would contend that it should be part of a holistic approach.
Granted, one might argue that expanding roads should be the only solution to wrestle with traffic congestion. The key rationale is that it provides immediate expansion of capacity, especially in rapidly growing cities such as Beijing and Jakarta. However, this line of reasoning fails to the factor in the fact that the large amount of cars and vehicles is increasing rapidly as the personal demand for commuting from home to workplace of all workers.
Given the aforementioned arguments, I am convinced that building more roads alone is ineffective and that the government should adopt more viable solutions. One such approach is encouraging carpooling among people as it could reduce the number of vehicles during rush hours. Such a measure should be excecuted in tandem with raising public awareness of the dire consequences to environment attached to harmful emissions that resulted in environmental degradation. People, once fully cognizant of these impacts would be more cautious about how to reduce their carbon footprint and harmful emissions that their vehicles released, thereby solving the problem of traffic congestion.
To summarize, while there are justifications for expanding roads, I would doubt its efficacy in completely tackling with the problem of traffic congestion. Instead of building more roads, the government should ram up its efforts to educate the public and promote carpooling activities. By doing so, traffic congestion could be curbed.