Challenges of Transportation planning in Asia, Europe and North america

Following the ever increasing trend of urbanization in the global scale and increase in population in the developing world, transportation planners are facing different challenges on their effort to insure a sustainable transportation system for the society. Some of the challenges include:

-lack of transport options
-congestion, pollution and climate change
-Increasing trends in car occupancy
-A decreased tendency in bicycling
-Increase in energy consumption
-road safety and security

These challenges need to be addressed by transportation planning which is sustainable. But what does sustainable transportation planning means? The concept mainly focuses on access and mobility. Access refers to ensuring access of transportation for all regardless of living standard or any other discriminatory measures.

Sustainable transportation planning includes the economical, social, financial and governance aspects into consideration to effectively implement a properly functioning transportation system.

Asian perspective

As urban population is increasing in an alarming rate with decrease in rural population in many Asian countries, car occupancy rate and public transportation are also on the rise. The motorization in some rapidly growing Asian countries like Indonesia and Thailand can be quoted as an illustrative example here. some of the subsequent challenges of these recent developments include:

Increase in emission
Inefficient energy use
lack of city development strategy
ineffective transport planning
governance problem etc.

And it is usually the vulnerable poor who are affected the most by the problems as they struggle to cope with the burden of paying the increasing transportation fares.

Any solution?

Planners need to put a lot of effort to ensure a sustainable transportation system, that takes the political, economic,social and environmental aspects into consideration. It is also a good practice to integrate all the transportation systems into a single platform.

European and North American perspective

Trends
Urbanization increasing.
Motorization rate is already high.

strategies
clean energy Eg. using bicycles
less energy Eg. Using energy efficient cars.

policies and programs

Different policies and programs are being introduced to curb the problem.