As the World Health Organization (WHO) reported, outdoor air pollution is such as “the main environmental risk for health”, linking it to 3.7 million premature deaths worldwide in 2012. It means that traffic congestion increases vehicle emissions and degrades ambient air quality. Lung cancer, asthma, other respiratory diseases associated with heart disease and stroke are impressions of traffic jams. According to a CNN report, a study by Washington University in St. Louis noted that “being exposed to the daily hassles of traffic can lead to higher chronic stress”. Further, evaluations of danger associated with congestion must consider travel time, the continuation of rush-hour, congestion-specific emission estimates, and uncertainties. Immediately, our understanding of the air pollution impacts from congestion on roads is very limited.
The majority of the number of studies has been done in order to discover the ways to reduce the people who do not have a habit of using public transport systems, encourage them to start using transportation and try to show them the benefits of this.
First of all, a common treatment for this issue is to upgrade the public transport such as bus, electric bicycle, electric motorbike, etc. it can be seen clearly that the government has recognized the importance of this point. As a result, they have promulgated laws or actions to deal with this problem. For example, Hanoi advocates simultaneously the agenda of limiting motorcycles will promote the development of public transport in both quality and quantity. HCM City has also studied the use of electric buses and boats and improved service quality on buses and bus infrastructure and has assigned a number of plans to increase the number of commuters using buses to 11.2 percent this year, up 1.6 percentage points from last year. The southern largest economic center has piloted electronic cards on nine crowded routes passing through universities.
Additionally, giving the users incentives should be an effective way. By offering the employees an intensive to make use of trains and buses, such as yearly travel cards, can encourage people to drive less and use public transport more. Car users or driven have to spend less money being used on car maintenance and fuel so that reduces air pollution.
Flexible start time also should be a good idea that we can consider. If you are thinking about how to boost the workforce using public transport regularly, it is a good idea to put in place flexible working hours too. For example, it can be clearly seen that from 7 am to 9 am, people pour into the street in order to go to school, go to the office, etc. causing traffic congestion. That way if any unforeseen circumstances arise, delays and cancellations to their scheduled route, working time does not have to be off is an example.
The next point is carsharing. This concept is quite new in Vietnam but very popular in developed countries like China, Korea, the USA, etc. it means that two more people can rent one car simultaneously for a short period of time, often by an hour to come to the same place and the price they have to pay will be share with each other. In this way, the number of vehicles and people using buses in the street can be reduced a lot. The result shows that this treatment has a boom in America in 2008 and increasing in Tokyo, Matxcova, Beijing these days.
Last, but not least, the most important thing in this program is to create a positive public transport office culture. There are a large number of ways to encourage people to start to use public transport but the main point is that educating people through materials and seminars, show them using transport is right and necessary for them. Besides, in the workplace, the manager can encourage people by setting office-wide sustainability goals like a competition.