Ethics

Traffic congestion is now a days a problem which is very common to most of the big metropolitans but some of the cities have tackled this problem well with some timely measures, LA is certainly not one of them.Traffic mobility problem has consistently increased over last few decades in Los Angeles due to increase in number of vehicles on road. Traffic congestion is causing enormous hours of delay and billions of extra consumption of energy and lastly adding thousands of tonnes of carbon-di-oxide and carbon monoxide in the air. Los Angeles has one of the most advanced freeway system which encourages the public to drive their personal vehicles and not use the highly advanced public transport system. The more vehicles on the road means more congestion which in turn means more more pollution and more cost of environmental damage. There are three major concerns for the city administrators which is causing this ever increasing pollution problem of LA. First Los Angeles is consistently ranked as one of the most overcrowded metropolitan areas in the state of California and secondmost crowded city in the US and more population means more vehicles both public and private which in turn causing more pollution. Secondly LA relies heavily on automobiles for transportation because as also indicated in the first paragraph that people love to use their personal vehicles rather than using the public transport system.Public transport system although advanced is often underutilized. Thirdly huge number of commercial vehicles carries goods from Long beach port to LA and various other US cities and towns. The number of truck trips per day goes as high as few thousand which carries 40 of the goods imported to US. Huge number of commercial vehicles , personal automobiles and huge population adds to the pollution figures.

Traffic congestion apart from causing all those direct problems stated above it causes some serious indirect problems as well, Time delay cost is one of them. Time delay cost is the cost incurred by people due to longer or unpredictable delivery time due to traffic congestion  which indirectly causes business delay or loss and also extra fuel consumption due to waiting or reroute taken to reach destination. According to 2009 mobile report statistic data, traffic congestion has caused 3.7 billion hours of delay and wastage of 2.3 billion gallons of motor fuel in last year. Resultantly, it will give rise to socio-financial problems.Traffic congestion directly triggers long term environment pollution and indirectly affects health adversely. Many research works show that the problem is extremely complicated because the effect of traffic congestion does not remain limited to only delayed delivery and fuel waste. It also accounts for the cost of health care and the the cost to maintain environmental balance. For example, the pollution generated from traffic congestion in Los Angeles is the highest among other metropolitan areas in the US.

Motor vehicles generate over 50 of carbon monoxide, 34 of nitrogen oxide and 29 of other hydrocarbon emission that is produced in the world from all sources. The pollution causes many diseases. The evidence shows that the most congested areas and surroundings  such as toll plaza will have a increased risk of premature infants by 10 due to higher level of pollution. Each premature infant will cause huge social cost including the medical treatment cost and hence, the productivity of the parents will get affected.Los Angeles is definitely not the only city in the world which have traffic congestion problem. It can take lessons from other cities as to how they are tackling the pollution problem. The major areas that can be improved immediately is by introduction of some policy or incentive to encourage people use more of public transport .The toll plaza with E-ZPasssystem will reduce the traffic congestion .The city can also use some advanced navigation system so that the average distance traveled per trip reduces and also it will help utilize the freeways in a better way and also reduce congestion. The future of Los Angeles can continue to grow provided the policymakers and we both act sensible and try to preserve our environment which will ensure a better, cleaner and congestion free Los Angeles.