Environmental Problems Linked To Developing Transport Systems Environmental Sciences Essay

Throughout the rapidly developing world, convenient transport system led people’s meeting become more and more time-saving and comfortable. However, the gradually developing transport system has brought kinds of problems which are well worth for people’s greatest attention. There have an increasing focus on the environmental problems caused by the developing transport system. With these serious problems come a range of questions on people’s daily travel. Many people worry about the living surrounding which influenced by surface transport system. In this essay, I will analysis the environment effect caused by developing transport system, and effective mitigation measures have used to solve these questions.

The surface transport system have consists defined to an extensive network of buses, cars, trams, trolleybuses and trains. Accompany with quick development of cities, transport system is expanding cover all over the cities to benefit for people’s daily lives during the same time. Mineta (2002) stated that transportation is essential to America’s security, economic prosperity and quality of life and surface transport system has supported the nation’s strong economic performance, and the evolution of world trade. There are widely held concerned that the developing of transport system has many benefits on human’s lives. ‘When people living in large cities, well established rail systems have significantly higher per capita transit ridership, lower average ,lower annual mileage, less traffic congestion, lower traffic death rates, lower consumer by this transportation ,therefore rail transit systems provide economic, social and environmental benefits to people’s lives’ stated by Litman(2010).

Transport is part of people’s live, therefore, government should develop sustainable Transport which includes walking, cycling, public transport, car clubs, car sharing, eco-driving and low carbon vehicles. The purpose of develop sustainable transport is to reduce the problems which bring to environment and society caused by travelling, and supports economic growth. During the same time, sustainable transport will reduce car emissions that contribute to air pollution problems and global warming. This indicates that sustainable transport systems provide economic, social and environmental benefits, and these benefits tend to increase as a system expands and developed. Although developing transport system brings kinds of benefit to us, the negative aspects which caused cannot be ignored also.

To date there has been agreement that no other machine has had a harmful effect on our environment than develop roads and increasing number of cars have brought to us. This is because people create the environment for living, but we have to repair our environment for cars and roads. The most serious problem caused by dramatically rising of expanding travel roads, highways, tunnels, overhead viaducts and the number of cars were environmental pollution in the crowded cities.

There are kinds of surrounding contaminative problems, which have explicit relationship with the developing surface transport system. This can be divided into many points: noise pollution; air pollution; global warming; road danger; dissolving the cities; energy use. Noise seems to be one of the serious problem, there are many of America dwellers are exposed to noise so loud it has the potential to degrade hearing capacity over time stated by Orlando (2007). It is general that traffic noise thorough streets make people feel depressed and uncomfortable when they stay at home. Therefore, to protect residents from this trouble, it is vital to maintain the noise level at an appropriate degree. Furthermore, air pollution caused by surface transport system not only leads to serious health problem to human, but owing to the acid rain, which damage forests, buildings and water. It is definitely a complex problem in a crowded city. Air pollution often choked cities, because of so many automobiles emerge creating pollution. There is a body of opinion that global warming is the one of the greatest dangers which people will face during a long time. The developing transport system, which were remains one of the main growing sources of greenhouse emissions. It was also leads to serious climate problems. ‘The climate crisis is extremely dangerous, and it is a true planetary emergency’, Gore (2006) stated. Global temperature is rising constantly, which leads to the world climate become imbalance.

Throughout the developing transport system, the crowd city has expanded under unsustainable methods to fit all residents requirement. Many people claimed that the crowded city as essentially “anti-human”. Therefore, it is necessary for government and organization to take mitigation measures to develop a sustainable surface transport system to deal with the environmental problems. In order to mitigate the noise problem, government installs some noise barriers and does some noise insulation works to reduce the noise effect of transport projects. Governments have to support the sustainable transport. Take the Australian government for examples, it is engaging with most areas to support various approaches to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from public transport system in urban centers. Government should also ask for public idea for the important issue, because environmental problem concerns everyone. The Australian Transport Council and the Environment Protection and Heritage Council Vehicle Fuel Efficiency Working Group (2008), with support from the Australian Government, have handout a paper to ask the public opinions for car Fuel Efficiencies, it is a potential measures to encourage people to use fuel efficient, it will cause low carbon emission. Furthermore, government set up greenhouse gas reduced program project which include change national travel behavior. Governments also should encourage residents to use public transports for reduce car exhaust, greenhouse emissions and it was also save money on fuel cost. Governments needs to increase its investments in protect our living surroundings. For the other thing, government must have a sustainable urban and transport planning to meet for the increasing number of residents and cars. In the transport development plans, in order to avoiding the types of protection natural source, water sources and other environmental factors, make a sustainable transport planning, environmental planning, urban development planning and other contradiction between environment and cities make transport planning more scientific and sustainable.

Take Singapore’s sustainable transport planning for example, there are several improvements which made in Singapore to have people adopt more sustainable modes of transportation. First of all, the public transport system is rapid reaching people’s requirement. During the population increases, the public transport network still keeping at the same rate with the population. There are effort have been set out to improving the expanding transport system and the frequency of public transport, such as buses and Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) trains. For the environment, Electric vehicles also have been introduced into Singapore for the advantage of having zero emission, therefore it will not bring environmental pollution stated by Shaw (2010). Furthermore, the Singapore environment council improves people’ consciousness to use green technologies in transportation and promotes the walking and cycling lifestyle. Therefore, Singapore balanced success in developing transport system and environment in sustainable development methods.

To summarize, surface transport system has significant support for economic development and it offers a wide range of benefits to people’ lives. However, transport system is still making noise pollution, air pollution and other environmental problems to cities Andersson (2005) . There are several reasons for that current transport systems are not sustainable. First of all, petroleum source reserves are finite and petroleum emission influence urban air quality, it also brings a range of environment problems. Secondly, numerous transport facilities make cities crowded and detrimental environment. For the others, increasing number of cars and transport system make urban sprawl. Although governments have take serious measures to deal with the problems, it still existing and have detrimental effect to people during the developing cities. In order to solve this problem, government and individual have to improve their consciousness to use public transport. It will reduce the environmental effect caused by car emission and make a better living surrounding to residents. Furthermore, a healthy lifestyle, such as walking and cycling should be encouraged also.