Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
used for a substantial share of the 60 per cent of
trips by all modes that are less than 5 km. Many
Dutch towns, and notably Delft, have promoted
cycle routes, but much remains to be
accomplished within this 'green transport'
initiative (Tolley 1997).
Many of the more ambitious transport
planning programmes have been implemented by
municipal authorities that exercise administrative
control over entire cities or conurbation areas,
and also own and manage the public transport
undertakings. This enables transport planning and
policy to benefit from the coordination of
services between rail and bus, thus ensuring that
every effort can be made to provide urban
travellers with an efficient and integrated
transport system. Major cities in the United
States and the United Kingdom have established
such transport authorities, and investment has
been coordinated to provide major facilities such
as the Tyne and Wear metro and electrification of
Glasgow's railways. However, transport
coordination is subject to national political
decisions, and in the United Kingdom it has been
displaced since the early 1990s with the
deregulation and privatisation of the conurbation
transport authorities.
input, particularly in the context of measuring and
analysing both personal transport requirements
and traffic generation from industrial and
commercial zones within urban areas. If the
objective of reducing overall levels of trip
generation within urban areas can be only partially
achieved, then the pressure on transport resources
will be lessened. Such pressures can also be
reduced if the approach to transport problems
involving 'non-transport' solutions can be further
developed by extending the time periods in which
facilities are available to the consumer. Shopping
hours in many retail parks are already organised
on a seven-day basis, and 'flexi-time' has been
adopted in an increasing number of workplaces,
but the overall impact upon urban traffic
congestion is still slight. An extension of home-
based working practices using electronic
communications with head offices will also aid the
reduction of journey-to-work flows, and what has
been described as 'the death of distance'
(Cairncross 1997) is gradually being achieved as
the need for and amount of personal contact is
reduced with increasing use of information
technology.
Although the problems of traffic congestion
and environmental pollution caused by the rising
use of motor vehicles are still the primary concern
of transport geographers and planners, the
difficulties faced by groups within urban
communities who will continue to rely upon
public transport for most of their trips must also
be addressed. These 'transport-deprived' sections
of the urban population suffer from the
continuing reduction in the quality of public bus
and train services, particularly in areas where
decentralisation of retail facilities has reduced their
choice of shopping in town centres. In the
growing cities of the third world, where income
levels still make most workers dependent upon
public transport, there is an urgent need for
investment in bus and rail services to cater for
peripherally located communities and decrease the
time spent in daily travelling.
At the national policy level, the deregulation and
privatisation of public urban transport have often
eroded many of the advantages to the consumer
CONCLUSION
Recent decades have seen a variety of innovations
directed towards solving some of the more serious
problems in urban transport. It is likely that the
continuing evaluation of these initiatives will be
an essential part of future research activity in
applied geography and related disciplines,
especially as the investment of private capital in so
many of these schemes will require an appraisal of
economic and social return rates. New light rapid
transit systems, for example, will require careful
evaluation both as separate undertakings and in
terms of their contribution towards alleviating
citywide transport problems.
The continuation of efforts to integrate
transport and land-use planning more effectively
will depend substantially upon a geographical
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