ancient cities

immense pressure. Transit ridership
per capita declined in many
cities. In this context, there was
increasing evidence that urban
rail projects were not achieving
their forecasted benefits with
respect to congestion alleviation,
environmental amelioration, or
improved social inclusion for
those without other travel options.
Despite some success in concentrating
growth around new transit
facilities and attracting new
residential developments to urban
cores, low-density suburbs around
the periphery of cities remained
the fastest-growing areas in many
jurisdictions.
As cities have become more dispersed, investments
in public-transit projects alone are less likely
to attract sufficient numbers of new riders to reduce
road traffic in the most congested locations, which
are often at bottleneck points on suburban highways
and roads. As such, since the turn of the twenty-first
century, cities around the world are investing in new
rapid-transit facilities, and this has contributed to a
period of overall ridership growth in many jurisdictions.
At the same time, there has also been a
renewed wave of major urban highway construction.
This has taken place in both developed countries
such as the United States, Australia, and the
United Kingdom and developing countries such as
China, where car ownership is rising rapidly.
A Focus on Supply and Demand
As cities face an array of transport-related challenges
with respect to economic efficiency, environmental
sustainability and social equity, planners
have developed policies that prioritize the use of a
hierarchy of transportation modes: nonmotorized
modes of transportation such as walking and
cycling, public transit, and car pooling. The renewed
emphasis on highway development since 2000 has
the potential to undermine these efforts and further
entrench automobile usage and low-density
development patterns.
However, since the late 1980s, transportation
planners have also focused on managing
the demand for urban transportation. This
Transportation
827
Increased road congestion, especially on freeways, has led to greater interest in rail
projects.
Source: Tracy Buyan.
demand-oriented approach has become more
widespread since 2000 and includes a variety of
context-specific policy measures. These are aimed
at providing financial, convenience, and time
incentives and disincentives that will encourage
car users to shift to alternative modes of transportation.
To this end, a range of incentive programs
have been implemented: discounted transit
passes; the installation of lockers and showers at
workplaces for cyclists, to complement new cycle
lanes; dedicated lanes on highways reserved
exclusively for cars with more than one occupant,
public-transit vehicles, and freight trucks;
and the designation of prime parking spaces for
car-pool vehicles, with lower fees.
Conversely, planning organizations and politicians
around the world are becoming bolder in
implementing disincentive programs to discourage
car usage. For instance, in Europe, there are high
fuel and vehicle registration tax levels, making owning
and operating a car expensive. In North American
cities, car commuting to employment facilities has
been reduced by charging users for parking. In
Singapore, there is a vehicle quota system in addition
to high annual car taxes. These measures, in combination
with high-quality public transit, have limited
car usage. In London, the implementation of a congestion
charge to enter the city center during peak
daytime hours has resulted in reduced car commuting
and improved local air quality.
This blending of emphasis on transportation supply
and demand is in recognition of the critical role