In contemporary traffic and transport context, there is an ongoing debate about whether governments should pour money into train and subway system construction or road expansion to reduce traffic congestion. While acknowledging both solutions may contribute to minimizing traffic congestion, I rather believe that investing in public transport systems is more effective than road expansion due to the existing limit of land resources and environmental problems in the long run.
On the one hand, investing in upgrading the road system can contribute to solving gridlock on roads for several reasons. This is because once the roads are widened, the transport and vehicle capacity will increase. Such development effectively facilitates traffic flow. Thanks to the wider road, vehicles can move freely without being stuck if any occurrence of accidents, rush hours or other causes, which lead to congestion. However, this solution may have flaws if there is a tendency of population growth, when the population rate increases significantly over time, the government would face the limit of land resources. Also, by expanding roads, people may tend to rely more on private vehicles which directly lead to many environmental problems, especially air pollution from greenhouse emissions released from those vehicles. As a consequence road expansion is no longer a viable solution.
On the other hand, pouring money into public transport systems such as trains or subways is a more appropriate solution for long-term benefits. This is mainly because public transport systems need less land resources to construct than roads. As time passes, if there will be an overpopulation, governments only need to invest in upgrading the transports’ infrastructures and facilities, not passively depend on non-renewable resources such as land. Moreover, by the application of public transports, fewer people will use the private vehicles, which contribute to the decarbonisation process and protect the environment. For example, Japanese nowadays usually use trains or subways to move among domestic areas for travelling in domestic areas instead of cars or motorcycles, which helps a lot in reducing both traffic congestion rate and emission rate of the country annually.
To sum up, both solutions of spending money in building roads and public transport systems may directly help to minimize the traffic congestion. In my opinion, investing in public transports such as trains or subways is a more comprehensive solution, which can deal with population growth over time and also environmental problems.