📘 Part 3: Traffic problems

This episode's vocabulary

Rush hour (noun) - the busy part of the day when towns and cities are crowded, either in the morning when people are travelling to work, or in the evening when people are travelling home.

Infrastructure (noun) - the basic systems and services, such as transport and power supplies, that a country or organization uses in order to work effectively.

To sacrifice (verb) - to give up something for something else considered more important.

Ownership (noun) - the state or fact of owning something.

To fund (verb) - to provide the money to pay for an event, activity, or organization.

Expertise (noun) - a high level of knowledge or skill.

Proximity (noun) - the state of being near in space or time.

Feasible (adj.) - able to be made, done, or achieved.

Near miss (noun) - a situation in which something almost hits something else.

Misapplication (noun) - the act or process of using something badly, wrongly, or in a way that was not intended.

By the same token (idiom) - used to mean that something you are about to say is also true, for the same reasons as what has just been said.

Convenient (adj.) - suitable for your purposes and needs and causing the least difficulty.

To opt (verb) - to make a choice, especially of one thing or possibility instead of others.

Undoubtedly (adverb) - used to emphasize that something is true.

To outstrip (verb) - to be or become greater in amount, degree, or success than something or someone.

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Questions and Answers

M: Let's talk about traffic problems. In what ways can we fix traffic problems?

R: Well, not driving in the rush hour seems obvious. However, I doubt it's possible since people have, well, they have to get home somehow. Expanding infrastructure and increasing alternatives to the problematic elements seems to be the best set of options.

M: Do you think building more roads will make getting around in cities easier?

R: It might, but then you have to balance that with all the other things that make a city a city. When you start sacrificing local tourist attractions or sites of cultural importance to make life easier for traffic. Then you probably need to start questioning your priorities.

M: What needs to be improved in public transport?

R: Well, I'm hardly an expert, but if I were to guess, I would say that it could be more efficiently run. There are some things that seem to do better under public ownership, like the trains and other things that need to be private, such as cars. Although servicing of the roads is publicly funded, I think, in order to operate efficiently. Like I said though, it's not my area of expertise.

M: But if you were in the government, what would you focus on in terms of public transport?

R: The trains. Absolutely the trains.

M: Why?

R: Well, first of all, they're more efficient, they're environmentally friendly, and they shouldn't be as badly run as they are. So if we had a better train service, we wouldn't need so many cars and we wouldn't need to use planes so often.

M: Which mode of transport is more popular in your country? A bicycle or a car?

R: I would definitely say cars. We don't have the weather and many people don't have the proximity to their work required to make that feasible. I hope one day it will be the opposite though and that would be safer all around.

M: How can transport be improved in your country?

R: Well, that's a good question, and it probably depends on the area you want to focus on. I mean, our traffic system could always be better since the number of accidents and near misses is increasing in relative and absolute terms, it seems. At the same time, while the condition of most roads seems reasonable, they could be made safer in places and more accessible in others in the case of bikes and alternative means of transport.

M: Is it fair to limit the use of private cars?

R: If you mean the government doing that by force, then no. There's too much room for corruption and a misapplication of the rules. If people choose to do it, in line with certain principles they have accepted, then that would be fair. It takes more time and effort, but I think it would be more effective.

M: Will there be fewer people using cars because of improved public transportation?

R: Well, I certainly hope so. And there were plenty of people who used the systems in London and Moscow that had cars. By the same token, other people also used the car as it was just more convenient for them to get around to get closer to their homes as well, actually.

M: Will they be fewer cars if public transport is free?

R: I think that depends on how everything is financed. There's no such thing as a free lunch. So if there's a massive increase in tax to pay for the public transport, making people less able to afford petrol for their cars then I suppose so. However, if it was made free by taxing corporations or even just making sure they paid their fair share of tax, then people might still not opt for the, or sorry, people might opt for the convenience of cars still if they could drive them.

M: Do you think modern means of transportation cause harm to the environment?

R: Well, undoubtedly, yes. Even the ultra-modern electric cars require rare earth minerals extracted at no small cost to the place where they were mined. That's true for almost everything people do. Though, there's always some kind of cost. So the question should be, do they do less harm? And I have no idea how you would even begin to calculate that.

M: And what about the future? Do you think in the future we'll have fewer traffic problems?

R: That's a good question because the population is increasing. So that would mean that there will be more people on the roads, which means that there would likely be an increase in problems or accidents. However, by contrast, there's also increasing sophistication in terms of technology which would help make transport safer. So I don't know. It depends which one of these outstrips the other, to be honest.

M: Some people believe that there'll be driverless cars very soon. Do you agree?

R: Yeah, it was in the news the other day. So we have them. They're just not being, I suppose, put in place on a mass scale.

M: Thank you, Rory, for your lovely answers!

R: Yes, thank you! It's okay.

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