‘Car-free days’ are increasingly popular in urban areas where its policy mandates that on certain days of the week, private vehicles are banned from central areas. Supporters of this policy claim since its adoption, life in urban communities has improved, I believe however that it is disadvantageous for both residents and businesses.
Propornents for this practice claim that since its introduction noise and air pollution have reduced significantly, thereby fullfilling our civic duty to nature. The arguement is based on evidence of the quality and quantity of the vehicle emissions produced. Hence, it is logically to assume that less traffic on the road will correlate to better environmental conditions from reduced pollutants emitted.
However, simply reducing the amount of autombiles driven on a particular area does not improve the health of the environment, it simply reduces accessibilty to said areas. All infrastructure are designed to allow urbanites to access the metropolitian areas easily and it is with this knowledge that businesses congregate in city centres in order to be successful. The implementation of ‘car-free days’ has made these ares inaccessible to the general public who will have to seek alternative means to travel such as public transport there which are often more time-consuming and less straightforward. As a consequence, some people are unwillling to make the journey to the location causing harm to businesses situated there as well. Additionally, there will be an increased demand for more convenient public transport which does not contribute to the reduction of vehicles driven to city centres.
Instead the answer to the environmental problem will be to invest in technologies that use alternative fuel for vehicles, inventions that reduce emissions from automobiles and roads.
In summary, it is better to abolish the ‘car-free days’ as it has no consequence on the urban evironment but has a determential effect of commercial and private residents, instead new research must be encouraged to improve envrionmental status.
