Urban space is the property of the entire population of the city and public transportation uses it much more efficiently than the private car. Moving on roads public transport not only carries its passengers – it frees the road space to be able to use it all the inhabitants of the city. In addition, it reduces traffic congestion, which make the city unattractive place to live and work. Given the ongoing urbanization and increasing demand for mobility in big cities, traffic congestion in all the cities of the world will continue to grow, unless we change the approach to mobility.
- Direct costs of congestion on the roads reach 2% of GDP. Every year this amounts about one billion euros.
- Traffic jams seize cities: trip from home to work by car takes 90 times more urban space and infrastructure financed by the citizens than the same trip, implemented by bus or tram.
- If all went to work on the machines, the total space required for parking cars would be the same as the space required for the implementation of all economic activity of the same number of people. Indeed, the office space per employee is about the same, that it is necessary to park his car – about 20 square meters per person.
- Measures to improve the mobility and accessibility of transport in urban areas require much lower level of investment than those costs that are a direct consequence of traffic congestion, and taking into account the social impact of price and the external costs of such investments will be even more justified.
According to the UN Program on Environmental Protection in Beijing every day there are nearly 1,000 new cars are being registred. For their parking needs are added daily the area sized of 2 new football fields.