13 Traffic Jams

CHAPTER 1 Traffic LIFE IS FAST IN BUSY CITIES, BUT TRAFFIC IS SLOW. WHAT'S THE ANSWER? Today, we have a big problem: traffic! There are too many cars in cities and sometimes outside cities, too. This isn't a new problem. Before cars, people used vehicles with horses. There were a lot of them, and they made a lot of noise! A famous English writer, Samuel Pepys, wrote about London traffic jams 350 years ago! Today, people often don't live near their work. In many places, there aren't many trains and buses, and they're expensive. So people drive to work. A lot of people use their cars to go into cities in the morning and home in the evening. Often, there's only one person in each car. And there are too many cars. In Tokyo, New York, London, and other big cities the traffic goes very slowly, only 15 kilometers an hour! Bicycles travel faster! It can be hard to park, too. Sometimes, almost half the cars in a city center are looking for a place to park. In some cities, there is only one parking space for every two cars!

CHAPTER 2 Finding Answers TRAFFIC IS A PROBLEM, BUT WHAT CAN DRIVERS DO ABOUT IT? In places where traffic is bad, drivers find different answers to the problem. People who live in the same place can have a carpool— they go to work and come home in the same car. They often use a different person's car each day. There's less traffic when three or four people use only one car. In some countries there are special fast lanes for carpools. Cars with only one person can't use these lanes. Many drivers have no other person in their car. But they want to use the fast lanes. So some of them put a big doll in their car! They want the police to think the doll is a person. But if the police stop the driver, he or she has to pay a fine. People say some funny things when police stop them in a fast lane. One time, the police stopped a woman. She was the only person in the car. But she said, "It's OK. I'm going to have a baby! I'm two people!" She had to pay the fine.

To use fast lanes, people also use "casual carpooling." Some people wait in a place near a road with a fast lane. Drivers see that people are waiting there. They stop and give them a ride. They don't know the people. But they want another person in their car. Then they can use the fast lane. Why don't more people take public transportation to go to work? In many cities, buses and trains are fast and not expensive. The problem is that many people really like their cars. GPS tells you how to get to your destination. But does GPS help drivers to go faster? And does it stop traffic jams? Maybe. It's easier for drivers with GPS to get to their destination. They don't have to drive for a long time to find the right street. So there's less traffic. And some kinds of GPS show where the traffic isn't moving. Drivers can take a different road and stay out of traffic jams.

CHAPTER 3 No Parking! IN THE CITY, YOU CAN'T PARK! WHAT'S THE ANSWER? Drivers are unhappy when they can't find a parking space. In big cities, sometimes 40 percent of cars are looking for a space. In Freiburg, Germany, at one time it was 74 percent of cars! All those vehicles move slowly around the streets. They make traffic jams. Drivers don't like to pay to park. But if they don't have to pay, more people use their cars. So there are too many cars for the number of parking spaces. What are the answers to this problem? One answer is a congestion charge money that you pay to drive in a city. Drivers in London have to pay 10 ($16) a day. Cameras take photos of the license plates on cars. Computers check if the drivers paid the congestion charge. If not, they have to pay a fine. Another answer is good, cheap public transportation: buses, trains, and trams. Paris now has 15 percent less parking than ten years ago. But it has more bus lanes. Buses travel faster. More people park their cars outside Paris and take the train or bus into the city now.

When drivers park in the wrong place, they have to pay a fine. How much money do cities get from these fines? With 22,000 fines each day, New York City makes $600 million a year! But Sydney, Australia, only made $13 million last year. More drivers park in the right place in Sydney. Vehicles get fines, but what about animals? There's an old law in Florida. It says that if you leave an elephant in a parking space, you have to pay. If not, you get a fine! A lot of people want to drive into cities. And when it's cheap to park in a city center, there are too many cars, and it isn't possible to find a parking space. That's why it can be very expensive to park in some cities— $89 a day in Oslo, Norway. In London, you can pay about $1,000 a month for a city center parking space. But maybe the most expensive parking space in the world was in Greenwich Village in New York City in 2012. To buy it you needed $1,000,000!

CHAPTER 4 Strange Travelers THINK ABOUT HOW WE TRAVEL. STRANGE, ISN'T IT? In Ben Elton's book Gridlock, aliens come to our world to learn about people. They look at the places where we live and work, and how we travel. But they don't understand cars. They see that every morning hundreds of millions of people get into big boxes. These boxes take the people many kilometers to their workplace. But often, the big boxes can't move because there are so many of them. Then, in the evening, the people get into their boxes and slowly drive home again. The aliens think this is really strange. Why don't people travel in the faster boxes they call trains and buses? Or live near their workplace? Do they like to sit in boxes for hours? Or aren't they very smart? The aliens are right. Why don't we live near our workplaces? It's often because houses are too expensive in the city. People who lived in the city before have to live outside it now. But many jobs are in the city center. Cheaper houses in cities are a possible answer to traffic problems.