Research and Strategy of Urban Traffic Congestion Control
Los Angeles, and California as a whole, has been fighting against traffic congestion, and fighting over how to solve the problem, for its entire history. Policymakers are studying potential solutions such as pricing roads – both metro and SCAG are looking into testing versions of it – but none of the current ideas are new, according to the authors of the new paper named, “A Century of Fighting Traffic Congestion in Los Angeles: 1920-2020.” “Century” was published by the UCLA Luskin Center and authored by Martin Wachs, Peter Sebastian Chesney, and Yuhong Wang.
The paper describes century-long arguments over what form the city should take: the one focused on downtown ? Or the one distributed into suburban neighborhoods ? Arguments for both were based, in part, on trying to solve the growing congestion that was choking downtown streets early last century.
But the arguments were never resolved, just as LA’s congestion has continued to grow even as the city expanded. Today, the city is a sort of hybrid, with multiple city centers spreading throughout the region. And many solutions proposed to solve traffic congestion – public transit, encourage people to move out to suburbs, build ever wider freeways, make traffic management regulations and technological fixes – have never brought more than a temporary reprieve from the unrelenting growth in congestion.
With the acceleration of urbanization, urban public transportation has been developed and improved for a long time as well.
Currently, China’s traditional and single ground transportation system has been transformed into a multi-functional and compound multi-transportation one. However, the congestion problem in cities has become increasingly serious. Cities in different countries should take different measures to implement the accumulation pole. They also should focus on energy source consumption, environmental pollution and health care brought by traffic congestion. The practice and research countermeasures of relieving urban traffic congestion can be divided into developmental, managerial and restrictive measures. Urban traffic congestion is a systematic problem which needs to be treated with comprehensive measures, and to be given priority in terms of the use of developmental measures in order to improve urban traffic supply capacity.
A research paper pulished in the journal of Urban Transportation & Construction thinks that it is necessary to strive to enhance urban traffic management level and practice administrative measures. With historical basis, development level and fairness of urban development in China need to be taken into account in terms of the use of restrictive measures.
Read the full paper at: http://utc.usp-pl.com/index.php/utc/article/view/87