Friday, 11 April 2014

What about our Road Traffic problem?

Urban sprawl is used to describe everything bad about urban growth today (Peiser, 2001). According to Peiser, sprawl is a world-wide phenomenon, leading to many ills within and surrounding the city. Controlling urban sprawl may turn this unwanted development into something good, but, urban development in Trinidad’s capital city of Port-of-Spain has not capitalised on this occurrence. One major impact of urban sprawl is the increased traffic to get into the city. As communities developed outside of the city, the population spread outwards. With increased travelling population, huge influxes of people need to move into the city and out of it during the work hours of the day. This has led to hours of traffic to get in and out of the city.
Have a look at this article (http://www.trinidadexpress.com/letters/Simply_too_many_cars_on_the_nation_s_roads-170861001.html) written by the Trinidad Newsday, which blames the frequent traffic pile-ups on the increased number of vehicles on our nation’s roadways.
Although this inefficiency can be associated with poor traffic planning and management, urban sprawl is also an influencing factor. Our inefficient use of urban sprawl and poor traffic management has led to our traffic congestion we face today.

Reference:

Peiser, Richard. 2001. Decomposing Urban Sprawl. The Town Planning Review, Vol. 72, No. 3 pp. 275-298

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