Urban Transport Pressing Issues

Big and middle size cities concentrate complex economic activities that are supported by transport systems…, but what happen when transport system cannot satisfy the needs and requirements of urban mobility? What really happen is different in different cities and countries, but they have one factor in common: urban traffic chaos.

This chaos is affecting productivity levels in main cities around the world, causing real “disasters” related to the transportation of labor, consumers and freight between multiple origins and destinations. Transportation planners are facing old and new problems, but all of them require innovative solutions, because despite extensive expending on urban transportation systems, the problems seem to only get worse.

Among the most pressing urban transport issues are:

• Public transport inadequacy
• Traffic congestion and parking difficulties
• Longer commuting
• Loss of public space
• Environmental impacts
• Increasing number of accidents
• Higher energy consumption
• Inefficient urban freight distribution
• Extensive urban areas have to be devoted to transportation

Urban areas all over the world require new approaches to addressing their transportation problems, but some countries are more urged than others in finding appropriate solutions, for example, in the United States unbalanced transportation systems are exacting enormous costs and are one of the causes of the current crisis. 

Even in transit-oriented concepts such as in some European cities, transport systems infrastructures are fixed, while cities are dynamical entities, which speak about “transport obsolescence” and demands new, radically innovative solutions… like TTube.