Transportation And Community D

681 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Effect of transportation in the modern world

Transportation affects every aspect of our lives and daily routine, including where we live, work, play, shop, go to school, etc. It has a profound impact on residential patterns, industrial growth, and physical and social mobility. Roads, highways, freeways and mass transit systems do not spring up out of thin air. They are planned. Someone makes a conscious decision to locate freeways, bus stops, and train stations where they are built. Transportation is no less a civil rights and quality of life issue. Safety and accessibility are the most significant considerations in transportation planning. Zoning and other practices of exclusion result in limited mobility for poor people and those concentrated in central cities.
Over the past decades, automobile production and highway construction have multiplied, while urban mass transit systems have been dismantled or allowed to fall into disrepair. The end result has meant more pollution, traffic congestion, wasted energy, urban sprawl, residential segregation, and social disruption.
All communities have not received the same benefits from transportation advancements and investments. Some of the governmental policies in housing, land use, environment, and transportation may have even contributed to and exacerbated social inequities. Some communities accrue benefits from transportation development projects, while other communities bear a disproportionate burden and pay cost in diminished health. Generally, benefits are more dispersed, while costs or burdens are more localized. Having a multi-lane freeway next door is not a benefit to someone who does not even own a car.
The automobile-oriented construction and infrastructure projects cut wide path through low-income and destitute neighborhoods, physically insolated residents from their institutions and businesses, disrupted once-stable communities, displaced thriving businesses, contributed to urban sprawl, subsidized infrastructure decline, created traffic gridlock, and subjected residents to elevated risks from accidents.
Transportation is critical to healthy, livable and sustainable urban and rural communities. The transportation system influences, and in turn is influenced by, economical development decisions, land-use patterns, real estates investment decisions, and energy consumption patterns of the public and private sectors. The interests of those making transportation decisions, middle and upper class, educated professionals primarily, are served, while the interests, perspectives and needs of people left out of the decision-making process, people of color, poor, working and transit-dependent people, are not. The value of social justice and ecological sustainability are not major priorities in the existing transportation system.
Poor people and people of color are subsidizing our addiction to the automobile. They pay the highest social, economic and environmental costs and received the fewest benefits from an automobile-dominated transportation system.

Show More
Related

  • Federal Budget Dbq

    1355 Words  | 3 Pages

    When construction takes place, it is usually way before it is actually needed. Of course it is helping prevent dangerous and fatal occurrences but for the most part some of these changes can wait. Instead of spending so much money on our transportation category we should be putting more into education. “The money that the Federal Budget gives for education covers college aid loans, special education programs, free lunch to students in need, anti-discrimination efforts, research, and special programs” (Document D). Education is one of the most important things a person can have. ”

    Read More

  • Book Review: Divided Highways

    505 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the book Tom Lewis goes back and forth between the good and bad that came about from building highways. While the paved roads connected our country, made travel time faster, provided recreation, and pushed the development of automobiles they also created more congestion and travel time, divided communities, and made us slaves to automobiles. The author is critical of the highways, but he does realize the great achievement it is in the building of America. Lewis said, “As much as we might dislike them, we cannot escape the fact that ...

    Read More

  • Interstate 15 and California 60 Freeway Interchange

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    We take them for granted when driving miles to the closest mall. We are unconscious of their usefulness when traveling to see a distant relative by car. We can't take a moment to stop and admire their beauty and usefulness; the architectural wonders that are highways and their interchanges; which have such a rich history embedded in the American suburbia of today. Let's go back to the early 1900's, when the automobile was starting to become a dominate part of the American life (Morton, 2014). Around this time; a shift began to occur towards private transportation over public by influencing policies in their favor (Nicolaides and Wiese, 2006). One of these polices was created by the Federal Aid Highway of 1925; the United States Highway System which basically expanded the highways across the United States connecting one another, creating new opportunities for growth in many areas (Weingroff, 1996). This had many effects on different factors of the American way of life; specifically suburbia (Morton, 2014). After the war, the private home that was a luxury a few years prior, was now becoming affordable for many thanks to low interest rates and flexible payments through the National Housing Act of 1934, created by the Federal Housing Administration (Fishman, 1987). Perfect example of a policy acting towards private over public was the Los Angles Master Plan of 1941, which pushed the direction of private automobiles and singles households: there being 1.16 million cars (2.4 people per car) and having 31 percent of the city land dedicated for single family homes, this was really solidifying the post suburbia lifestyle (Fishman, 1987). In Los Angeles alone around this time, 900 square miles were transformed to tract development homes ...

    Read More

  • America Needs More Public Transportation

    1068 Words  | 3 Pages

    Automobiles play a major role in today's society. Almost every American owns at least one motorized transportation vehicle. Some say they make our lives better by reaching places faster than before. Others say they are a harmful to the environment. Have they made our society better or worse? They may be fast, but do we as humans want our environment to suffer because of time. Face it, cars pollute. And they release destructive chemicals into the air. Air pollution can threaten the health of many subjects in the environment including human beings.

    Read More

  • Urbanization Problems and Sustainable Development

    1366 Words  | 3 Pages

    Newman, P. (1999). Transport: reducing automobile dependence. In D. Satterthwaite (Ed.), The Earthscan reader in sustainable cities (pp. 67-92). London: Earthscan Publications.

    Read More

  • Public Transportation Bill

    1155 Words  | 3 Pages

    The government is pouring billions of dollars every year to sustain and attempt to fix the system we currently have in place and yet the problem of transportation is not getting any better. We are exhausting time, money and resources with this pointless system of trying to fix problems that are simply incurable and relying of a method of transportation that is impractical. Traffic, congestion and accidents plague this nation because every household has several cars and each member of the household has to personally drive him or herself to separate locations daily. This simply does not work. Our roads and highways simply cannot keep up with the growing population and our current way of life. Public mass transportation is desperately needed to fix this problem.

    Read More

  • Rail Transportation In Los Angeles County

    1653 Words  | 4 Pages

    One study by the Dukakis center found that due to gentrification, car ownership near rail stations increased in some cases resulting in lower use of public transportation overall (Nuscas).This finding points to the possibility taxpayer money could be used better spent since: Congestion will persist due to induced demand Ideally, if people that usually drive begin using rail transit, this would lead to a

    Read More

  • Personal Transportation vs Public Transportation

    1458 Words  | 3 Pages

    This isn’t a single sad tale about an island out in the Pacific Ocean. The truth is the way the population is growing and places are expanding traffic is also greatly increasing. For example, a recent report from the U.S. Department of Transportation in Hosansky’s article on Traffic Congestion estimated that, “in 1994 governments at the federal, state, and local levels spent $124.5 billion on the nations transportation system. That figure has certainly risen sharply since 1998, when Congress passed the 6-year $217.9 billion Transportation Equity Act”(par.22). In just four years America has spent $93.4 billion dollars to build and repair roads. Citizens in agreement with constructing more roads do not realize that in five years the new roads will be just as congested and land will be even more scarce for further construction. Another negative aspect of constructing new roads is that, once new roads are built, more shopping centers, surplus housing, food chains, and other sprawling suburbs pop up. These all contribute to more cars, which results in more traffic congestion.

    Read More

  • Urban Development In Canada

    310 Words  | 1 Pages

    The urban infrastructure is the physical manifestation of our social values and, as such, it reveals the underlying problems with the current urban form. In recent decades, population growth and rural-urban migration have increased urban sprawl, resulting in more numerous and rapidly growing cities, which have become vibrant centres of culture and commerce. There is a flip side, however. Higher levels of consumption create mountains of waste; population growth and the inequitable distribution of wealth also lead to more slums and homelessness; and the addiction to the automobile encourages urban sprawl to the detriment of downtown areas and neighbouring farmland. The urban issue is exacerbated by the fact that 79 percent of Canadians live in urban areas,

    Read More

  • Effects Of Road Construction Essay

    1287 Words  | 3 Pages

    Think of three things that irritate you the most. Surely traffic has got to be one of them. Road construction just happens to be the main cause for traffic. To add on, road construction seems to usually take place in the busiest roads at the busiest times. In the article “Effects of Street Pattern, Traffic, Road Infrastructure, Socioeconomic and Demographic characteristics on Public Transit Ridership.” by Mosabbir Pasha, he talks about travel demand increasing in many countries. In other words, there is more traffic happening all over the world. I come from Goshen, Indiana which is a small town. However, road construction is a huge issue there that still has not been resolved for many years. Road construction is not the main problem, the delays

    Read More

  • What´s Urban Public Transportation In Toronto?

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    It needs to improve its areas of “walkability” and encourage health and environmental factors by adding bike lanes to the heavily biked Church Street. Its roads are not overburdened and its public transit systems are frequent, and highly accessible. One factor to be drawn from this conclusion is that Church and Wellesley’s overall transportation success is not indicative of the GTA as a whole. In fact, its success is the result of government policies that have abetted a focus on highly trafficked, highly populated, highly profitable areas such as the Downtown Core (Keil, Roger, Young, 2008). In the article, Urban Form and Travel Behavior as Tools to Assess Sustainable Transportation in the Greater Toronto Area, the authors conclude that the GTA is headed in a negative direction, and that the goal of sustainable transportation will not be met or improved in the future under the current policies and trends. Overall, the symptoms of Church and Wellesley, although beneficial to the BIA locals, could be seen as a symptom of an greater problem with the city’s transit system that needs to be addressed through political, bureaucratic, and organizational reform ((Zaidan, Esmat, Abdelgadir, Abulibdeh,

    Read More

  • Statement Of Purpose In Transportation Engineering

    864 Words  | 2 Pages

    The development of every nation hinges on the effectiveness of their transportation systems. Movement of goods, services and people to and from locations is made possible by transportation systems. The importance of effective transportation systems cannot be over-emphasized. Many countries face transportation problems and my country Ghana is no exception. A trip of about 30 minutes usually takes about an hour or more due to traffic jams. This is seriously impacting productivity and has become a topical issue in the country. The situation is the same in Uganda where I currently work. To this end, Transportation Engineers are needed to design roads/ highways that will stand the test of time, plan effective traffic management systems to reduce

    Read More

  • Public Transport and Private Car

    863 Words  | 2 Pages

    Most of cities that people live are sequentially growing, daily routine of many people are also adapted for surrounding in the present. A lot of people have to spend most of their time with travelling though long distances to get from one place to another for connecting their businesses or other purposes by transportation. Most people use public transportation such as BTS and MRT to go each places while many people are using their own cars to travel. Thereby, both transportations have the same destination that is taking and moving people. People can choose vehicles from alter reasons depend on how people are responded to their needs by public transportation and private car that are different in convenience of travelling, expenditure of money and security of travel.

    Read More

  • Transportation

    1014 Words  | 3 Pages

    Transportation systems and the routes they use have greatly influenced both how and where people live. Reliable transportation allows a population to expand throughout a country's territory and to live comfortably in remote areas far from factories and farms. The growth and expansion of the United States were directly related to the means of transportation available at the time. The more compact cities of the U.S. eastern seaboard are the result of early human- and animal-based transportation systems that allowed only short trips. The more sprawling cities of the western United States are the result of an automobile-based transportation system that permits much longer travel distances.

    Read More

  • Urban Transportation Essay

    2103 Words  | 5 Pages

    The development of urban transportation has not changed with the cities; cities have changed with transportation. This chapter offers an insight into the Past and the future of Urban transportation and is split up into a number of different sections.  It includes a timeline of the different forms of transport innovations, starting from the earliest stages of urban transport, dating back to the omnibus (the first type of urban transportation) and working in a chronological order until eventually reaching the automobile. However, these changes in Urban transport did not happen for no reason. Different factors within society meant urban transport needed to evolve; points will be made on why society needed this evolution. In contrast I will observe the problems urban transport has caused in society as a result of its rapid progression. Taking account of both arguments for the evolution of urban transport, I will look at where it will go in the future.

    Read More

More about Transportation And Community D

Open Document