Public buses, subways and trains are relatively safe, fast and cheap. But competition from rideshares and concerns over COVID-19 will soon see some local agencies short of funds.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Traffic congestion
Displaying 1 - 20 of 61 articles
London was rated 2021’s most congested city.
Until train use recovers, a new approach to rail funding is needed.
Apps are telling us how to get around our cities faster. But if each person acts only in their own interest, society at large gets stuck in traffic.
Cyclists in Melbourne are less likely than those in Dublin or Seville to ride in the rain. Understanding why is crucial.
Transit agencies could use the money to buy new subway cars, buses and maintain rails. The funding is designed to build on last year’s emergency aid, which kept transit operating through the pandemic.
The inability to curb road accidents in Ghana is tied to colonial and neocolonial legacies.
The benefits of road-user charging are now well established. And including electric vehicles doesn’t have to be a deterrent to their uptake, as New Zealand and other nations have shown.
Electric vehicles would lower emissions, but if their lower running costs lead to increased car use that creates a whole lot of other costs for our cities.
COVID led to commuting time savings worth over $2,000 a year for each driver and $5,000 per public transport user. But as workplaces reopen, we may need road user charges to keep traffic flowing.
Motorways were once seen as a way of reducing congestion in our towns and cities. But the more we build, the more they fill with drivers.
First trains, then cars and, now, COVID-19 have all spurred New York to reimagine how its scarce space should be used – and what residents need to survive.
As COVID-19 restrictions are eased, cities face crippling congestion if people shun crowded public transport. More frequent and faster services, using innovations like pop-up bus lanes, can avoid this.
Some new habits we’ve seen emerging during the pandemic could help us solve tricky problems like traffic congestion, which have challenged our cities for a long time.
The sweeping introduction of driverless cars could see more vehicles on the road, driving longer distances. But smart planning could solve some of transit-associated environmental and social problems.
Faced with the eye-watering costs of building infrastructure, it makes sense to turn to much more cost-effective smart technology to get traffic flowing.
Scenarios based on a survey of Adelaide commuters and analyses of traffic flows show it’s possible the congestion could get worse in the transition to driverless vehicles.
An analysis of trips to school has found the extra time and distance private secondary school students travel is a significant contributor to morning peak-hour congestion.
Commuters who drive to and from the CBD typically earn much more than most. Concerns about the fairness of charging drivers who use these busy roads at peak times are overblown.
Parcel and courier delivery vehicles are often blamed for traffic congestion in our cities. But they’re only a fraction of the traffic caused by tradespeople and other services.
Top contributors
-
Transport and Cities Program Director, Grattan Institute
-
Transport Fellow, Grattan Institute
-
Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University
-
Associate Professor in Infrastructure Management, University of Sydney
-
Professor of Future Urban Mobility, Swinburne University of Technology
-
Senior Lecturer in Transport Planning, The University of Melbourne
-
Associate Professor in Urban Planning, The University of Queensland
-
Chris Rissel is a Friend of The Conversation.
Senior Research Fellow, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University
-
Professor, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University
-
Professor of Urban Policy and Director, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University
-
Program director, Cities, Grattan Institute
-
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Sustainable Urban Precincts Project, RMIT University
-
E-Mobility Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
-
Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Wollongong
-
Distinguished Professor and Director, Urban Futures Enabling Capability Platform, and Director, Healthy Liveable Cities Group, RMIT University
