A smart city uses technology, or intellectual design, in order to help sustain a community in reaching goals both environmentally and economically. In Victoria, an expansion of its current bicycle infrastructure alongside an improved public transportation system, could see a significant decrease in private transportation and general vehicle congestion within the city and its surrounding areas. Currently, Victoria has very little incentive for citizens to use public transportation as a main, or supplementary form of transportation. Mass amounts of private transportation has caused inefficient traffic patterns around a number of locations in the Greater Victoria Area. Public transit is abundant in Victoria, but inconvenient routes and times, …show more content…
Politically, resistance from the mayor or city council could prevent construction of additional bike lanes required to form an interconnected bike lane system. Support from significant percentages of Victoria’s population would be required to persuade any reluctant political opposition. Economic concerns stem from finding sufficient funding required to construct additional bike lanes and traffic-related infrastructure to make this initiative possible. Financial responsibility will primarily fall onto the city and paid for using taxpayers' money to improve the transportation infrastructure of the city. Improved bicycle infrastructure sees a direct correlation to increased local business revenue, as well as reduced costs associated with maintaining traffic based infrastructure (Toolkit BC, n.d.). The social impact of this initiative is expected to create some controversy from present day commuters and users or residents of affected roads and city blocks. Technological barriers for a bike system in the Greater Victoria Area are quite small, as no “cutting edge” technology is required for this smart initiative. Environmental factors to consider is the physical characteristics of the local geography and its impact in constructing additional bike lanes and additional required traffic infrastructure. …show more content…
We want to create a simple framework for the implementation of bicycle systems, so other cities and communities have the blueprints to implement a similar smart system in their respective areas. These systems are designed to have a long term effect on reducing overall traffic throughout the city and drastically increase the number of bicycle and public transport commuters. With an increase in commuters taking alternate forms of transportation, we expect to see “ride together” programs that encourage people to commute in groups. Lastly, we want to get organizations and the city to work together in tracking commuter’s commitment to alternate forms of transportation and offer tax rebates as incentives to switch from other private forms of
Locals speak out: Getting Penrith on track 14,000 strong, community outcry with local Penrith City Council as online petitions calls on the federal government for infrastructure funding. Demands regarding dedicated funding for public transport access are growing as the public get behind Penrith City council and the Nation Growth Areas Alliance (NGAA). Online participation in petition submissions to federal government bodies has created a large movement and voice for residents of the outer Western Sydney suburbs. The campaign stresses the critical need for connection between the outer western suburbs and Sydney’s North West and South West. The proposed objective of convenient connectivity aims to generate more job opportunities and health access to essentially improve the well-being and togetherness of individuals within these communities.
There would be less complaints going in to the city, making the satisfaction skyrocket. By cutting public transit, they’ll be saving on money that they can put towards fixing the city and helping the homeless. In Winnipeg, we have iconically bad roads. There’s pot holes and cracks everywhere, and it has damaged vehicles.
The growing reliance on the private car has resulted in socio-economic, land use and environmental challenges in Australia. Due to the increasing demand for better transport infrastructure, threat of social exclusion and external costs (such as pollution and congestion), it is vital that Melbourne, and the whole of Australia, start planning to reverse this
Newman, P. (1999). Transport: reducing automobile dependence. In D. Satterthwaite (Ed.), The Earthscan reader in sustainable cities (pp. 67-92). London: Earthscan Publications.
Transportation System in London, England London is Europe’s largest city. Every day millions of people have to commute to get to their work place. Through out the city businesses rely on a transport system that enables employees and customers to access their offices shops and factories . An efficient transport system provides saves the environmental , time and costs. Which can result in an increase in commuters who use the transport system more regularly as they will trust the system more which will lead to more money coming in from the transport sector.
Dear [insert name here], I am writing to you today to express how irritated I am with the lack of public transport in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, especially in areas such as Eden Park, Mickleham, Beveridge, Kalkallo and Donnybrook. Apart from Eden Park which is currently Green Wedge, Mickleham, Beveridge, Kalkallo and Donnybrook are growing fast due to new developments and estates. While the amount of housing in this area has dramatically increased, Public transport and infrastructure in these areas has not changed and has not kept up with the demand for housing.
As time goes on, infrastructure inevitably finds itself in need of improvement and repairs. Compounding this issue is the fact that the Canadian population is continuing to rise; according to Statistics Canada, Canada's population could be 47 million by 2050[1]. This brings challenges, especially in the domain of day-to-day transportation. Traffic congestion already costs Canada billions of dollars annually, and as the population booms, this issue will only worsen if nothing is done to counteract it[2]. To alleviate the problem, it would be wise to implement improved alternative transportation, specifically autonomous public transportation powered by electricity.
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
Such means would allow more people to take public transportation to work and thus take those cars off the road. The result would have a great impact in Los Angeles because less than six percent of commuters use public transit, compared to the twenty-five percent of commuters that use public transit in New York, and the twelve percent that do in Chicago. Downtown Los Angeles is less condensed than New York and Chicago but the suburbs surrounding Los Angeles are much denser than the typical suburbs. In other words, there are more people that need to travel farther in Los Angeles compared to other cities. A solution to said problem would be to improve the bus routes to the suburbs of Los Angeles and extend the subway system there too; if the benefits of construction outweigh the costs.
Ohio is now ranked 45th among all states in that category, behind the likes of Iowa, Vermont and Alaska, states that each have smaller populations than Northeast Ohio alone.” (Allard, S., 2018) The people called for not only a safe, functional and reliable system, but also for fare equity. Two transit riders were interviewed and passionately spoke about the positive impacts that public transit has in their lives as well as pointing out the need for affordable busses and trains. One of the riders with a disability stated that for him, public transit is everything.
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,
Most people take the urban public transportation system for granted. It is used in every aspect of our daily lives: work, education, medical necessities, recreation, etc. It is also important for the transportation of goods and services, which aids the growth and maintenance of our economy. Urban public transportation is the critical component of our quality of life and economic stability. The MBTA, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, is Boston and Eastern Massachusetts’s major transportation service. The MBTA has played a central role in the development of Boston and surrounding cities and towns for more than a century; providing service from 175 cities and towns into Boston. On an average weekday over 1.2 million trips are made on the subway, buses, commuter lines and other services in the mass transit system. With an international airport, a ship port, the highways, and the rail lines to connect regional cities and towns to national and international destinations and markets, Boston’s urban public transportation system has made the region’s growing role in the global economy possible.
Smart Cities by focusing solely on technology can lead to continuation of suboptimal design of urban infrastructure thus leading to wastage and misallocation of public resources. Smart Cities have no incentive to upgrade the pre-internet physical infrastructure. Further the technology is short lived and risks of obsolescence would require constant investments. Thus smart cities are essentially being seen as smart services like smart grids, smart lighting, smart parking, smart buildings etc. and not the improvement of the core physical infrastructure, which enables all those services. The current discourse promotes a idea of smart cities as technocratic fiction for urban management wherein data and software suffice with knowledge, interpretation and thematic experience are superfluous
It is still used as the primary means of daily transportation in some cities. In the industrialized world it seems to have come a full circle. The bicycle is re-emerging as a vehicle of choice for short runs in urban areas. It does not pollute the atmosphere. It is almost noiseless. It does not take up precious parking space and wide roads. It has been estimated that for distances up to 8 km in city centers a bicycle may be faster than a car given the time taken for taking a car out of a garage,
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.