Have you ever visited New York? If you have, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Broad Way?, Statue of Liberty?, or fashionable people? Well, for me, it was horrible traffic and busy streets. It took one and half hour to pass through only three blocks. After the horrendious experience, I was determinted not to visist New York again. As the example clearly shows, traffic congestion, especially in many metropolitan cities, causes numerous problems. To resolve the issue, many local governments have tried to reduce traffic congestion in rush hours, but it dose not work at all. However, as many other countries have shown some successful cases, I strongly believe that collecting fees during rush hours is the only effective way to reduce traffic becasue people are more likely to be sensitive to financial matters, and the collected fee can be invested in the development of public transportation, resulting in less air pollution in the entire city.
Most of all, it is needed to focus on the fact that how effectively the government can regulate the overall traffic during rush hours in terms of traffic control policies. As you know, there are many other ways to solve the matter. For example, the city can give some priority to car pool, or environmently friendly cars. However, considering the fact that car pool, in effect, is not useful because it is difficult to make an appointment with others every in the morning and some hybrid cars are stiil far away because it is not cost-effective. However, in singapore, the government strictly regulated city traffic during rush hours imposing many fees on the cars that come into downtown during rush hours. As a result, according to the government, they were successful in reducing overall traffic not only during rush hours, but also during non-rush hours. Presumably, their success came from the basic economic philosophy: people are economic animals.
Another benefict is that with the collected fees, the government can invest them into improvement of public transportation. Due to the serious economic recession, it is not easy to raise taxes in other areas such as income taxes or property taxes because these policies can make the current economic situations worse. However, if the government try to collect fees during rush hours, some citizens may complain about the policy, but after noticing the improvement of public transportation, they will change their minds. Moreover, if the public transportation is cheaper, faster and more convenient than driving a car, who would use their cars at the cost of paying fees? As such, collected fees can convert into improving public transportation and thus lead citizens to using the more convenient public transportation more often than not. Besides, when citizens use public transportation, there will be less air pollution in the end. If the city is cleaner than before, many will visit the city and it will contribute to the overall economy of the city.
All things considered, there must be many advantages in collecting fees during rush hours because it can naturally impose some burdens on people using cars during rush hours, and then collected fees can be invested in improving entire public transportation, attracting more tourists with cleaner air in the city. |