THE ROLE OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN TRAFFIC RESTRAINT - A CASE STUDY

Traffic congestion is a serious problem in cities throughout the United Kingdom and Cambridge is no exception. Expected traffic growth will cause increasingly severe and more widespread congestion in the future, imposing a burden on both motorists and the economy as a whole. It will also have a damaging effect on the local environment. Environmental, financial and social costs mean that it is not possible to solve urban traffic problems by building more roads. Investment in public transport, parking policies, traffic management, efforts to encourage flexible working/school hours and increase car occupancy are all features of reducing traffic demand, but it is doubtful whether on their own, these standard transportation policy tools are sufficient to meet the pressures of the future without some form of additional traffic restraint. In this paper, possible measures of traffic restraint, such as urban congestion charging, are discussed, and will indicate that to be successful, it should be used in conjunction with a package of standard measures to influence travel demand. For the covering abstract see IRRD 866258.