5. 130 pts] The United States depends on transportation to compete globally and

Question

5. 130 pts] The United States depends on transportation to compete globally and to help revive a sluggish domestic economy. Individuals depend on transportation not only to get to work but to shop, socialize, and access health care, among other goals. For all of its benefits to the nation and individuals, however, transportation imposes large costs-lost time in traffic congestion deaths and injuries from crashes, demand for imported petroleum, the structural deficiency of aged infrastructures, and the release of greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution g the wide variety of issues observed in the current transportation system, address Amon most critical issue from your perspective and propose a viable solution or two to handle the he issue you selected

Explanation / Answer

Transport geography seeks to understand the spatial organization of mobility. It has emerged as a full fledged field within geography with a strong propensity to include concepts and methods from other disciplines such as economics, engineering, environmental sciences and sociology. Becausetransportation systems are involved in a wide variety of scales and modes, from local public transit to global maritime shipping, the approach has a tendency to be partitioned. It is indeed difficult to reconcile perspectives such as pedestrian mobility issues related to land use or the selection of air cargo hubs. Multidisciplinary approaches remain at the core of transport geography simply because its modes are at the same time independent but interconnected at different scales. Irrespective of the scale and the mode, transport geography shares several common issues and challenges.

1. Congestion

The issue of congestion is likely to remain as one of the ongoing issues in transport geography because there are unprecedented demands for transportation being generated by a global economy that is ever more dependent upon the transport industry. The causes of congestion are well understood, even if the solutions are not. Congestion occurs across modes and locations and arises from two causes. Most important is when demand for mobility exceeds the capacity so support it. It can also occur when random events bring about a temporary disruption to service, such as an accident or a natural hazard such as flooding. In the case of the second set of causes, it is possible to mitigate their effects if the occurrence is frequent, such as accidents, or if the risks are great, as for example of flooding in a flood plain. A common and attractive solution is to increase capacity. However, increasing capacity engenders a hidden demand, so that adding lanes to an expressway tends to attract even more circulation. Furthermore, demand is increasing consistently, so that the practicality of this solution may be questioned.

The expected growth of the demand is likely to have major impacts on the nature and form of the future transport industry. In the short term at least, road transport is likely to continue its dominance of the transport industry. There are two basic reasons for this assertion. In the developed world automobiles and trucks already dominate the market, and the spatial patterns of people, industries and services have adjusted themselves somewhat to the demands of these modes. Such low density, space extensive patterns are pushing the traffic congestion ever further out, and make it very difficult for other higher capacity modes to compete. At the same time the demand for mobility is growing as a result of the rapid industrialization in developing countries such as China and India. There, a modal shift is occurring in favor of road transport. Increasing prosperity represents a great potential for growth in road transport.

Congestion is not limited to internal urban-generated traffic. International trade is likely to continue to be dominated by maritime transport (in terms of weight) and air transport (in terms of value). This has already led to a concentration of traffic a relatively small number of gateways and hubs, which are capable of extracting scale economies. For example, the 20 largest container portshandled more than 49% of global traffic in 2012. The traffic concentration however is already producing capacity problems in many of these gateways, particularly in terms of accessing their hinterlands. International trade has grown at a rate faster than economic growth as measured by the GDP in recent decades and there are expectations that congestion related to trade flows (or long distance freight transportation) will remain an issue in the future.

For geographers there are a whole range of issues arising out of the growth of demand and congestion. First, are a series of questions surrounding how to provide solutions. Second, are the effects on future spatial patterns. Conventionally, the solution to congestion was to provide more capacity by building more infrastructure. Such a response depended heavily on engineering solutions. It is now recognized that a multi-disciplinary approach is required. Engineering capabilities to design and construct infrastructure and systems, and to develop further technological innovations remain fundamental. However, transport policy and planning requires a broader perspective, one that considers different goals and alternatives, responds to different needs for mobility, and one that seeks ways to manage demand.

Congestion is spatially bound. It takes place in specific locations with impacts at a multitude of scales, from a particular highway intersection that may delay traffic over a few hundred meters, to blockage in a port that may disrupt the flow of goods over half a continent. Each event produces a spatial response, from the car driver who searches out an alternative route to the shipper who selects a different mode or point of entry for succeeding shipments. Increased demand and the rising likelihoods of congestion will intensify new spatial responses and thus it appears very likely that new spatial flows and structures will come into being. They involve:

Congestion not only wastes time, it increases pollution and crashes. While this undoubtedly annoys you as a traveler, it could be worse; your city might not have congestion because no one wants to be there. Still, it would be great to have a thriving city without congestion. People could reach more destinations in less travel time, and thus have more time to spend doing the things they wanted. If you figure it out, let us know.

Political double-speak today “addresses congestion” rather than “solves congestion” (almost twice as often according to Google). This is probably because policy-makers want to sound like they are doing something without promising anything. But I don’t think talking to congestion accomplishes much.

There are a number of proffered solutions out there. Congestion is, in principle, a mostly solvable problem, even if no fast-growing city has fully solved it. This article outlines 21 ways that congestion could be solved. Some of these are dumb, many are good, one is great.

The first set of strategies are basically supply side. But congestion is caused by a mismatch of supply and demand. So let’s turn to demand.

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