There is always a cost to everything that we do be it negative or positive, this will depend on your actions. So I guess the big question is, do the benefits of motorised transport outweigh the cost of it?. I am sure the environmentalists will give you a straight answer NO with capital letters. But on the other hand if you put the same question to developers and others, they will give you a yes answer, and probably go ahead to tell you how far back the world would be without unlimited travel. And rightly so because if you look at the movement of goods and services for example, it has brought tremendous benefits economically and socially to the whole wide world really through creation of jobs etc. For instance fresh vegetables can be gathered from a farm somewhere in Africa and be in a Tesco store in 24 hours time while it is still fresh, brilliant isn't?. There is a whole chain of people that are working within this time frame to make this possible and of course was it not for the advance technology in transport this would not be possible.But if we flip the coin on the other side, there is air and road travel involved here, it is said that CO2 emitted high up in the atmosphere does more damage to the environment, and not forgetting all those tracks on the road to deliver the goods to the stores.
I think public transport can give a lot of answers to a lot of problems with transport but it also has some drawbacks which I think should be addressed to make it more effective and desirable. First of all it is only economically feasible in areas with relatively large populations, as the number of people per square mile decreases, the efficiency of public transport also decreases. This means that the system have to be prepared to run at a loss. In such areas private transport is inevitably more desirable. Public transport systems are also very expensive to build and to operate which means that consumers have to pay a higher cost to use public transport. Public transport is sometimes also very crowded, uncomfortable, dirty and unreliable and no public transport can provide the convenience of using your own car. And may be this is where we get the link to general lack of fitness in the population at large, we become too comfortable with using our own transport we forget about the side effects and also the unwillingness to change.I also think we live in a motorised culture especially in the UK, because if you look at countries like Holland they have a totally different approach to transport. Their whole transport system is built with green matters in mind for example, they have bicycle lanes and parkings, walk paths etc and sustainable travel is promoted and encouraged actively even their MP's go to work on bikes (www.bbc.co.uk)
Public transport though has it is own advantages especially when it comes to the environment.It is more environmentally friendly in the sense that, for example, a single coach filled with say a hundred people uses only slightly more fuel than does a single private car hence the amount of air pollution per passenger is much less. In addition, it is a more efficient way of transporting people because an underground system operating on two tracks say 36ft wide can transport around 80,000 passengers per hour, whereas an 8-lane motorway around 125ft wide, can only transport20,000 passengers per hour.Public transport is also socially beneficial as it creates jobs, be it the people behind the wheels or the guys maintaining the road works, and it is also a good way of interacting with others (http://science.jrank.org/pages/4169/mass-transportation-)
I think the present transport system needs an overhaul if it is to persuade us to leave our cars behind. First of all, reliability needs to be sorted out, I also think we need to invest more in the system which would improve the number of services operating at one single time. This would mean better road works, better railways etc and probably even better pay for the employees which would help with staff retention. We need to have more bicycle lanes which would encourage people to go on bikes and obviously designated parking areas for the bikes. We also need to encourage car sharing more which might mean that we will need car sharing lanes on motorways and dual carriageways. The government might also want to think about investing in teaching people how to use the bikes at discounted prices to interest people. But I think our biggest problem is the fact that our road works are built with one thing in mind which is vehicles which I think contributes a lot to the motorised culture. The leading figures as well needs to lead from the front rather than the back eg the MP's, they need to dump their big cars and get on the bikes like their counterparts in Holland. There is a transport problem mainly because there is not enough done to combat the problem and there is no way that the benefits can outweigh the costs.
There is a need to invest more on green transport for example the electric cars and things like renewable sources of energy. But I think more emphasis needs to be put on encouraging healthier lifestyles, walking, cycling and probably car sharing and use of public transport to reduce the over reliance on single car use.
