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Traffic situation: Why big cities are running out of road space

highway sector, highway industryIn emerging economies, many cities have reached the point where roads’ carrying capacity is running out.

Think traffic is bad in New York or London? They ain’t got nothing on Jakarta and Chongqing. The top of TomTom NV’s ranking of the world’s most congested places is dominated by emerging markets. Among cities in rich countries, only Los Angeles makes it into the top 15, and then only just. Some of the world’s worst traffic snarls are in South Asian cities not even picked up by TomTom’s ranking, such as Dhaka, Delhi and Karachi. Their problems are only likely to get worse as growing populations and rising incomes push already-straining transport networks to the limit.

In emerging economies, many cities have reached the point where roads’ carrying capacity is running out. There are about 40 registered vehicles for every kilometre of road in the US, France, Russia and Brazil, based on analysis of World Health Organization and Central Intelligence Agency data. That compares with Iran, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, which are all north of 200 vehicles per kilometre. It is hardly an accident that the traffic jams in Tehran, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Jakarta have become so legendary. Two factors have made this just about manageable, for the time being. First, fewer people own vehicles in poorer places: There are just 13 registrations per 1,000 people in Bangladesh, 30 in Nigeria, and 44 in Pakistan, compared with more than 500 in most wealthy countries. And when people in low-income regions do get their first vehicle, they tend to be motorbikes and scooters, which take up less space than passenger cars.

Both those mitigating issues are less helpful than they look. For one thing, as incomes rise, vehicle ownership does, too. Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia have almost as many vehicles per head as the UK. For another, two-wheelers still require surrounding space to avoid collisions. Scooters and motorbikes on the move take up about half the space of a car. That, alongside the exhaust fumes they spew, helps explain the motorbike bans already implemented in parts of Jakarta and Manila and planned for the entire city of Hanoi by 2030. One way of stemming this flood has been restricting vehicle usage. Road-space rationing programmes, which ban driving for some cars on particular days, have been implemented in cities from Manila and Mexico City to Bogota and Beijing. London charges for entry into the central city, which has a similar effect. Alternatively you can limit car numbers by mandating special permits for car ownership and using auctions or lotteries to allocate a fixed quota. First established in the 1990s by Singapore, these systems have since spread to more than half a dozen Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and even the comparatively sleepy outpost of Guiyang.


Autonomous vehicles could, in theory, increase road capacity by using shorter stopping distances than would be safe with human drivers. But for the moment, such technology remains science fiction, especially in the complex, dynamic streetscapes of emerging-world cities crowded with scooters, hawkers, pedestrians, tuk-tuks and livestock. The solution that is likely to be the most effective in the long-term is also the most drastic: An expansion of public transport—in particular metro and suburban rail networks that remove traffic from roads altogether.





Source: Financial Express