Thoughts about The New York Times article. "Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy"

This blog covers my thoughts about a recent article “Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy” from “The New York Times”.

For many decades having a cleaner air and having less traffic in cities has been a challenging problem for government officials, engineers and city planners.

It’s known that one of the important facts in having cleaner air is to have less motorized vehicles in the street since motorized vehicles produces emissions.

According to U.S Environmental Protection Agency, “Transportation sources emit greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. In 2008, transportation sources contributed approximately 27 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation is also the fastest-growing source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 47 percent of the net increase in total U.S. emissions since 1990, and is the largest end-use source of C02, which is the most prevalent greenhouse gas”.

Now let’s thinks about this as an equation:

Motorized vehicles produce emissions, traffic increases motorized vehicles, emission increases and finally emission is bad for health! So what is the solution?

Well, it’s simple. The usage of motorized vehicles should decrease. I know it’s easy to say this fact but it’s very challenging to adopt this in the major cities of the world.  

In order to solve this equation highly education is needed. People from young age should know that cars produce emissions and its going to be bad for their health thus they should learn the alternatives instead of using cars. This is like teaching a kid the basics of math before they start middle school. If a 12 year old does not know the basics then how can they solve an equation! I learned that in the Netherlands 4^th graders have a course for bicycle riding and they will get certified at the end of the term. They learn all about the benefits of bicycle riding as well as the harmful cause of vehicles.

I remember when I was a kid all I could think of was learning how to drive a car. I learned how to drive when I was 9. Nobody ever told me that driving a car will produce emissions and it’s bad for health. It was one of my happiest days when my father bought me a car. And I used to travel with it for even a 500 meter distance.

Now let’s look at my country, Iran and its air quality problems. Iran is ranked 8^th in the world as producing emissions and it produces 538,404 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year! That is a lot! 

Below you can see two simple pictuers of traffic in Iran which is not only in rush hours. It continues from early morning to 10 pm.

WOW!

I just came back from a visit to Iran and the moment I stepped out of the plain I could feel that breathing is not normal there. I read an article that stated, “If you sit down and breathe from near a car exhaust, it’s cleaner than the air in the city that people breathe”!

Going back to the article, it seems that Europe is doing a great job reducing traffic. For example, drivers should pay expensive congestion charges while entering the heart of the city in London and Stockholm. That is a great idea. If I know that my car expenses is much more than a train ride in order to get to the city then I would use the train.

Another example from the article was from Zurich’s busiest squares which it seems that cars are banned on many blocks which will lead to a cleaner air and less traffic in the city.

Recently in Iran they started a strategy which is called “even and odd”. The strategy was cars with an odd number at the end of their license plate could only travel in the odd days of the week and vice versa for even numbers. The only free day was holiday which is Friday in Iran. It worked at the beginning but that strategy did not continue to work since the amount of cars were increasing day by day.

Having said all these facts I should point that the Irking drivers should be a policy however in order to do that great facilities are needed such as a good public transportation system and also a good bicycle facility. If these facilities are available for people I am sure we would see the shift towards using less personal cars and having a cleaner environment.