Thursday, May 19, 2011

An interesting little blog post discussing how developing countries go through the same cycle of road building, suburbanization, and congestion that the United States has already been through. Luckily, some countries, like China, are recognizing the problems of a car-oriented society and are investing heavily in other forms of transportation.

6 comments:

  1. But would americans really jump on board with alternative transportation? I just dont see us abandoning our suvs unless gas prices are around five bucks a gallon

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  2. I think this article is great, it brings up the point about congestion, and the way that people are handling this problem is by using the motto "bigger is better." Everyone thinks we need more lanes and bigger ones, but the answer should be to think of a way to create an efficient public transportation system.

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  3. Yeah, we really need to rearrange our entire infrastructure because our highway systems and dependence on cars are not sustainable. I was thinking how it would be nice if we could just start over, because maintenance on our current infrastructure, infrastructure which is not the best solution to our transportation issues, is way too costly...but we need to maintain our current infrastructure because we can't afford new solutions right now! I just hope other countries with less infrastructure can learn from the US's, China's, and other countries' current problems, and build better.

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  4. It is smart for other countries to learn from our mistakes, it seems that we are not quite that intelligent yet. The American Dream was seen as ideal in other countries: owning a car, higher education, etc. As a global economy, we must work together to find a way to further spark the economy.

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  5. Sadly, I have seen the same thing happening in Karachi,Pakistan. Massive investment is going into road expansion and building overheads .Up till now I really thought that it was "development". I still think Karachi needed that kind of infrastructure. But as far as learning from America's mistakes , I don't think Pakistan is really doing that.

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  6. like this article suggests, it's important to look at other countries and see what works and what doesn't for us. I hope that in the near future the US will be able to create efficient mass transit systems in our large cities, and to and from the metro areas. However, mass transit is just going to work everywhere. I live in metro detroit, and while i think a system that connects outside cities to detroit might work. One specifically in my city would fail.

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