Green Transportation - Ways To Make Public Transport Popular
Use of fossil fuels has caused great damage to the environment and combating global warming has become the need of the hour. For this reason, car manufacturers are under pressure from all corners to come out with cars that are fuel efficient, like green fuel cars. Extra credit goes to those who develop vehicles which use alternate sources of energy such as electricity. However, nothing is expected to beat public transport. Going green is not the responsibility of the car manufacturing industry alone. The citizens have to do their part and start contributing.
According to the environmental community, the eco-impacts can be reduced drastically by making following the practice of walking and cycling for small distances and public transport for long distances. This comes in wake of the fact that a bus carrying 10 people (the average capacity is 50+), is more eco-friendly than these 10 people taking their personal cars. However, one does not find many takes when it comes to ditching the comfort of personal cars. People prefer to spend more (in terms of fuel costs, insurance premiums, maintenance costs etc.) rather than save by using subways etc. Analysts have been trying for years to figure out the exact reason and finally they seem to have an answer.
Earlier the reasoning was non availability of state of art transport leading to inconvenience and delays. Over time, that has been taken care of and the public transport now is such that it provides almost the same level of comfort as a private car. Nevertheless, there is still something missing. There has to be a concrete reason to make them use them. Some ways include:
a) Providing Free Internet Access: Free internet access can be provided in public transport vehicles. This would enable the traveller to access his work even while travelling and save valuable time. Worries of getting late would be taken care off and the life would become a lot less hectic. All this while, they would be convinced from the time they save and at the same time, the number of cars on the streets would reduce.
This has been realized and implemented in a lot of cities across the world. WI - FI connectivity is available for anyone who has an instrument to connect with. Cities like San Francisco and Seattle offer unlimited access to the internet to all commuters.
b) Promoting the Concept of Shared Transportation: For those who would rather reach their destination by a car than use public transport, using this option proves to be very effective. If normal cars is used to their full capacity, they prove very efficient in cutting greenhouse emissions. This works on the following concept: Sharing of vehicle reduces the total number of cars on road thus reducing the total individual carbon emissions.
In the recent years, a number of agencies have come up which assist commuters avail the car pooling facility. Once they register, a vehicle is allocated to a group of individuals who are picked up from their respective pickup areas at the specified time.