Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in many Western European cities had also
embarked upon a dramatic rise, and the initial
response of urban planners was to adopt the North
American approach and increase road capacity to
meet the growing demand.
However, the physical patterns of many
European towns and cities, often based upon
medieval cores, hindered construction of the
extensive urban highway networks advocated by
American transport planners, and the results were
often a compromise between the need to conserve
the historic cores of inner cities and acceptance
that private cars had become the dominant means
of urban transport and required a more effective
road system (Dunn 1981).
In Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia,
urbanisation in the last four decades has created
some of the world's largest cities, but facilities for
the movement of people and goods have failed to
keep pace with physical expansion. Car ownership
levels are significantly lower than in Western cities,
and the principal transport problems are associated
with inadequate public transport systems, the
mixture of large volumes of motorised, animal-
drawn and pedestrian traffic on unsuitable roads,
and the lack of finance to support infrastructure
improvements (Dimitriou 1990b).
In North America and Europe, the emphasis
has now shifted from providing additional road
capacity to devising policies for the restraint of
private car use, accompanied by the upgrading of
rail and bus undertakings to provide an alternative
form of movement for the commuter and other
users of facilities in central areas (Box 34.1).
Implementation of these policies has often
generated strong opposition from the car owners'
lobby, which enjoys the benefits of personal
motorised travel within the city but is reluctant
to accept that such travel is now exerting a
negative impact upon the urban environment.
However, promoting the advantages of public
transport, coupled with programmes of car
restraint, is now accepted by the transport
planner as one of the most essential elements in
future policy.
Contemporary patterns of urban transport,
together with the strategies for planned
improvements, must be seen in the context of
private and public sector involvement. Public
ownership and management of bus and rail
undertakings has often been the basis of
coordinated systems of transport designed to
achieve an increased usage of such services.
However, the recent trends towards deregulation
and privatisation or liberalisation of urban bus and
rail companies have replaced the environment of
coordination with one of competition in an
attempt to create more efficient services at lower
costs to the consumer, but the effects of these
changes have yet to be fully analysed. At the
national level, government attitudes towards the
public funding of urban transport improvement
projects also have an impact upon local planning.
In the United Kingdom, for example, the
encouragement of joint funding initiatives for
road and new rail building in urban areas was a
feature of the early 1990s, but progress has been
sporadic and very limited in extent. Given the very
high costs of urban transport improvements, the
availability of finance has always been a critical
issue in both the Western and the developing
world.
PATTERNS OF MOVEMENT IN URBAN
AREAS
The various types of movement of people and
goods within urban areas are achieved through the
choice of appropriate modes of transport. Personal
travel flows are the aggregate of individual trip-
making decisions, each of which reflects the
various needs of the urban population to gain
access to a range of facilities and services. This
accessibility is dependent upon the degree of
personal mobility, which in turn is determined by
the availablity of time, suitable transport, money
and levels of physical mobility. Personal trips on a
regular basis are dominated by journeys to work,
an activity responsible for many of the more
intractable transport problems. Journeys whose
main purposes are education, shopping, social or
leisure pursuits are also increasing in number and
complexity, and the flexibility of travel conferred
