Public transport needs to be used more - why do we take it for granted?

Cars and motorbikes have created a lot of pollution, a limit of space and cause accidents. Public transport will help decrease this, along with benefiting society and economy.

Adrian Thursday 4th February 2021 15:30

Longest traffic jam in the world on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway. Less use of cars and more use of public transport will stop traffic this jammed.

More and more people are concerned about the stress of driving cars, where people are bound to trigger anxious reactions and get nervous about potentially getting something wrong. Research from the University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that the chances of social isolation, anxiety and depression also increase in drivers who log 10 miles to and from work. Along with the stress driving brings, comes the dangerous safety issues, time-consuming traffic and the non-eco-friendly pollution.

All that’s just a small snapshot of the negative effects cars and motorbikes can bring. And that’s before the fact that it’s a big responsibility to own a car. You’re not just responsible for your own life, but also those around you. You can’t just go drive and have a daydream: you have to be aware and alert at all times and look out for any hazards around you. So far, there have been six million car accidents in the U.S in 2019 and have claimed the lives of 38,000 people.

Giving SpaceAs less cars are being driven, and more public transport is used, more space will be available for more valuable needs. We forget how much sheer space cars take place, and we need to give some thought to it. It’s not just traffic jams and parking spaces; there’s also the fact that the space used could be devoted for much better things. It represents a needed apartment building that was never built. Or an office building that would be convenient for workers working in that neighbourhood. Or a chef-owned restaurant where he overworks to try and support his family, instead of a pavement where cars only park for several minutes.

Perhaps the only place where cars eat up the most space is on the roadway itself. In 2014, a book called Copenhagenize illustrated the utter dominance of cars in a single Paris intersection, in these images:

And this is in a European pedestrian plaza with some little piano-like crosswalks. Imagine this on a highway right next to your local shopping mall... Another excellent illustration was made from a poster in London in the 1960’s from a London public transit organization:

Now what does this poster tell us about how we can make travelling more convenient? It tells us that public transport is the most space-friendly use of transportation there is out there.

It’s Economic BenefitsAlong with the sheer dominance cars bring within free space, we sometimes

need to remember how much our economy will blossom if we use public transport! In a new paper set for publication in Urban Studies, scholar Daniel Chatman of the University of Berkeley in California along with his fellow planner Robert Noland of Rutgers University researched that public transportation could have a hidden value of $1.5 million or $1.8 billion a year. And the bigger the city, the bigger the collection benefit of expanding transit. That’s insane!

Next stop: labour. One of the potential benefits of having an area clustered with people is that you have a wider labour force, which in turn, means a better chance of matching the needs of a job to the skills of the worker. Public transport plays an important role in facilitating skills, labour and knowledge within and between markets. Labour, capital and enterprise seek out the most productive markets, therefore it encourages competition and mutual economic growth.

Compare the economic benefits of this and private transport in an economic sense. Public transport is much cheaper than private transport, yet it still helps the country’s economy. Not to mention, paying for a car or any other private transport goes directly to the business of the private transport, while paying for a ticket (which is much cheaper than buying a car might I say) goes to the public transport business. Now, the public transport company uses their money to improve on the sustainability of the transportation, and would affect the environment sufficiently, which I will come on to next.

Effect on the EnvironmentButterfly effect: the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere. What if I told you private vehicles affect the environment like a butterfly effect. These vehicles are producing more and more air pollution, and are currently producing about one-third of the U.S. pollution. The smog, carbon monoxide, and other toxins emitted by vehicles are especially troubling because they leave tailpipes at street level. Guess what this does? We breathe the polluted air directly into our lungs, which have long-term effects including heart disease, lung cancer, respiratory diseases (such as emphysema) and ultimately, death. That can make auto emissions an even more health concern than toxins emitted high in the sky by industrial smokestacks. To emphasize how much vehicles give out air pollution, this graph will illustrate its

extent: As national and international leaders look to tackle the challenges posed by climate

change, the capacity of public transport to contribute to emissions reduction targets should be seriously considered. During peak periods, public transportation can be up to six times less emission-intensive per passenger kilometre than private vehicles. Given that cities in Australia rank among the most car-dependent cities in the world, shows the fact why it is the most polluting cities in the world. The first step towards reducing transport-related emission must be for governments and individuals to recognise the potential carbon abatement that can be achieved by a shift between private to public transport.

So, let’s respect public transport for what it is. It minimizes our chances to a dystopian future where carbon footprints take over our world. Or it can even just make a chef’s life happy by giving some space to build a new restaurant. Sure, it may seem quite obvious, but it is important that they are reiterated. Especially as new avenues are sought to improve the productivity it gives to our economy and the sustainability of our environment. I can’t help thinking how happy our world will be if we just had a slight change.

By Adrian