Traffic Control: The Need For Change

Traffic Control: The Need For Change

As the population of the United States dramatically increases and the

number of vehicles on the nation's roads and highways skyrockets, new methods of

traffic control and organization have become necessary, by utilizing new methods

of transportation or by revising the current system. In the past 15 years, the

number of vehicles on American roads has increased 41.9%, the number of licensed

drivers has increased 29.3%, but the size of the general population has only

risen 15.9% (Clark 387-404). Between the years 1975 and 1985, the number of

miles driven by Americans rose 34.6%, but the number of miles of roads increased

by only 4.4% (Doan 64).

Cars and other vehicles are an enormous cost to society, costing between

$300 billion and $700 billion per year. These expenses are caused mainly by

traffic accidents, traffic jams, and the environmental hazards created by the

large number of vehicles on the road.

Traffic accidents account for one of the major reasons that the current

techniques of traffic control need revision. Traffic jams, along with broken

cars and the lack of alternate routes, account for one half of the traffic

congestion in the United States (Clark 387-404). Although the number of traffic

accidents in the United States has slowly decreased over the past several years,

it is still alarmingly high. In 1990, approximately 7 deaths occurred for every

10,000 people in the United States due to traffic accidents (Wallich 14).

In addition, traffic jams also demonstrate the need for better methods

of traffic management. Due to both the increase of women in the work force and

the expansion of businesses to the suburbs, traffic jams have increased

dramatically over the past few years (Koepp 55). As a consequence of traffic

jams, the American population was delayed 722 million hours in 1985 (55),

costing the average citizen approximately $800 (Doan 64). In 1984, drivers,

while waiting in their cars during traffic jams, used three billion gallons of

gasoline (Koepp 55). This figure represents four percent of the total amount of

gasoline used during that year (55).

Highways themselves cause a large number of traffic jams in America

today. Of the 3.88 million miles of roads in the United States, 92% of them were

built before 1960 (Koepp 54). The government h...

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