Transportation is an ubiquitous challenge in most of the world’s largest metropoles, where communiting delays, long journeys, and traffic jams are a daily reality. As far as I am concerned, this phenomenon stems from overpopulation of large cities, and solutions require public transportation invesments. This essay will explore the causes and solutions to this problem.
The fundamental causes of transportation problems in big cities are related to uncontrolled growth and overuse of private transport means. To begin, most of the world’s largest metropoles experienced unparalleled development, in the past few decades, without constructing adequate transportation infrastructure. Consequently, these metropoles are unequiped to deal with the transit of millions of people. A pertinent example of this issue can be drawn from the city of São Paulo, which grew 10 times its population from 1960 to 1990, but lacked developments of subways and bus lines. Moreover, said metropoles concentrate a considerable number of affluent individuals, which prefer use private transportation options, such as cars and taxis. This practice results in daily traffic jams, particularly in rush hours, worsening the problem. For example, research in Los Angeles has discovered that 30% of its population commutes with individual cars.
Solving transport delays challenges requires comprehensive investment in building transportation infrastructure and incentivize the public to use it. First and foremost, it is imperative that large municipalities allocate a considerable portion of public funds in transporation projects, such as more subway and bus lines. For example, cities can learn from the success case in Beijing, which constructed more than 20 subway lines from 1960 to 2024, serving millions of people daily. Additionally, it is crucial to encourage the population to transition to using public transports over individual cars. For instance, most European cities implement weekly cars plate rotation and expensive parking fines, aiming to disincentivize overuse of cars. Such policies have had success in mitigating the amount of traffic jams in Paris and Rome.
In conclusion, overcrowding and abudant use of private cause cause transportant delays in modern large cities. Aiming to solving this problem, it is imperative that governments develop plans for building public transporation infrastructure according to population growth rates, and engage the population to actively use public transportation instead of frequently using cars.