Hidden costs of mobility in urban areas

Abstract

The densification of an urban core forces outward growth of the city to suburbs. The movement towards the suburbs is mostly residential for various reasons including economic, environmental or leisure. The sprawl creates segregated work, live and play zones which require connectivity in the form of roads. Due to, mostly, lack of strong public transport facility, connecting the suburbs, in most of the cities a rise in the private vehicle ownership is seen. With increasing expansion, increased travel distance and increase in number, too, the vehicle users demand more roads. This cyclic nature of demand of road leading to increase of cars and again demand of road to accommodate excess vehicles is observed. The transportation is integral part of our daily life but as important as it is, comes with various issues of which some are direct such as congestions, air pollution, etc. and others are indirect such as health issues, temperature rise, etc. The cost of using transportation is paid by the users as well as non-users. This nature of this cost may be tangible i.e. Monetary or intangible i.e. mental peace & Health. This paper attempts to synthesize the studies on the direct and indirect issues related to transportation system and analyze the hidden costs paid by the users & non users. The outcome of the paper is consolidation of physical, environmental and social aspects of issues faced by the urban population due to increased private vehicles.