History tells us that transport problems have been a major part of the problems of cities for many years, regardless of the kind of transport technology. American cities undertook to relieve traffic congestion by constructing elevated railways and subway facilities before the motor vehicle appeared on the scene. Surface transit vehicles were usurping so much street space in Boston sixty years ago that a subway was constructed to clear the way for the horses and electric cars using the streets. Traffic at rush hours was described back in 1905 as the number one problem of large cities in the United States, and pictures of urban traffic jams in the days of the horse and carriage testify that congestion was bad long before the motor vehicle made it worse.
Contemporary geography provides us with additional evidence that transport problems cannot stem entirely from transport methods, and that they obviously have a more deep-seated cause. Traffic congestion in cities has become acute all over the world. Tokyo, with its extensive commuter railways and rapid transit, is as overwhelmed by traffic as Los Angeles, with its automobiles and freeways. Delhi, with its bullock carts and teeming masses of people, is no less inundated by rush hour traffic than Bangkok, with its buses and bicycles. Istanbul is by no means a motorized city, but its traffic jams are no less exasperating than the more spectacular ones of Rome and Paris.
History and geography both tell us, then, that no matter how people move in big cities, there is almost always an uncomfortable degree of congestion and frustration. Often it seems that the more affluent a nation becomes, and the more advanced its technology, the less successful it is in coping with its traffic problems.
Why have cities allowed themselves to be the victims rather than the beneficiaries of the new mobility? Part of the answer lies in the failure to recognize that there are two aspects to the transport problem: the supply of transport capacity, and the demand created by the various activities taking place in the city. The only time we take both sides of the problem clearly into account is when a pipeline is laid or an elevator installed in a building. In both these cases the capacity of the transport facility is specifically related to the traffic that is to be generated, either by an oil refinery or by the predetermined use of a building.
Designing transport for a whole city is a much more complex task, of course, but the same conditions and solutions obtain. The basic cause of congestion lies in the failure to strike a balance between transport demand and supply. Failure to take the demand aspects into account will continue to make chronic congestion in big cities inevitable.
In the central areas of large cities today, restoration and rebuilding is taking place on a scale that has not been equaled for many years. But the efficiency of this new urban investment will be seriously impaired if the resulting densities and arrangements of urban structures are not accommodated by appropriate measures to facilitate the movement of people and goods. Either transport plans will have to be designed to cope with the congestion being created by urban building programs or the rebuilding itself will have to be tailored to what the transport system can accommodate. Tackling half the problem leads to no solution.
Adapted from "Transport: Key to the Future of Cities," a paper by Wilfred Owen in The Quality of the Urban Environment, edited by Harvey S. Perloff, published by RFF, 1969, and distributed by The Johns Hopkins Press.
A version of this article appeared in print in the September 1969 issue of Resources magazine.
