Page 267 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 3

Cihan Erçetin

Between1970 and 1990, there was a substantial boost in the number of
kilometers by private cars per person, by 90% in Western Europe (Jakobsson,
2004). While road traffic depending on motor vehicles escalates environmental
problems on a global scale, the continuous growth of motor traffic threatens
the quality of life in urban areas, and private car use stands as an important
source of these problems. In this case, reducing the negative impacts per
vehicle with new technologies will not have a significant impact on completely
controlling these problems; instead, new changes should be introduced by
adopting the trend of reducing vehicle traffic volumes (OECD, 1996).
Today, the traditional approach in transportation planning is replaced by
modern approaches and solutions. The basic goal in traditional transportation
planning approach stands out as the improvement of transport infrastructure
in a way to meet the demand for vehicle traffic. When traffic congestion, the
most visible transportation problem, is addressed with a traditional approach,
the solution should be to create additional capacities or to make timely
infrastructure investments meeting the demands. This approach, based on
regulating the transportation supply with interventions, provides temporary
relief by improving traffic conditions at the first stage along with new multi-
storey intersection arrangements and new road infrastructures. However,
after a while, with the formation of new additional demands, vehicles are
encouraged to be used more widespread, and as a result, new congestions
occurs again with decreases in quality of life. In this case, problems that deepen
further in unsustainable transportation arise as the additional capacity needs
consuming the limited urban area are met with the limited financial resources
in the form of a cycle (Öcalır, 2020).

Figure 1. The Unsustainable Cyclical Structure of th
Traditional Transportation Approach (Elker, 2002)
Supply-oriented urban transportation problem-solving policies introduced
by the traditional approach increase the greenhouse gas emissions and, along

252 Journal of Environment, Urbanization and Climate