ABSTRACT
The global transport problem has now reached crisis proportions. The simplest everyday activities, involving no more than gaining access to work, education, recreation, shopping, friends, relatives and medical services, now consume a significant proportion of natural, financial, environmental and human resources. A useful way of visualizing the depth of the crisis would be to describe the policy that has created the global outcomes discussed in this book. Transport policies are either non-existent or cast in the general context of reducing road traffic congestion, reducing road traffic accidents (RTAs) and increasing levels of economic activity. The global outcomes of transport are normally at odds with these policy objectives and it is informative to undertake a backcasting exercise. What are the policies that would have produced the transport problems we are now dealing with? These policies would include the following:
• encouraging as many people as possible to make as many journeys as possible by car on the assumption that government will always find the cash to build the roads, tunnels, flyovers and bridges;
• providing as much government subsidy and encouragement as possible to carbased transport through loans, grants, road building, cheap fuel and every other expenditure that can be diverted into supporting this system (health care, policing, the courts system);
• ignoring the enormous advantages of walking and cycling for conferring health benefits, achieving accessibility at low cost and enhancing the aesthetics and ethics of the city;
• trying to ensure that children get as little exercise as possible and therefore become more unhealthy as a result of being carried everywhere in cars;
• encouraging as much use as possible of very large cars (ideally up to 2 tonnes in weight) by one person only;
• encouraging as many cars as possible to fill up the available road space (always in short supply in cities) so that these cars disrupt buses, making them an unattractive option and making life very difficult for pedestrians and cyclists;
• encouraging as many cars as possible to pollute the air, increase noise levels and kill children;
• donating as much land as possible to keeping this system going, especially if that land is needed for food production;
• always ensuring that wealthy groups and middle class groups are well looked after, with enough road space, parking and public expenditure; and
• always ensuring that pedestrians are inconvenienced as much as possible when trying to cross roads, making very sure that cars are never delayed by even a couple of seconds in order to give pedestrians easy road crossing possibilities.
