Reducing City Traffic by Limiting the Need to Travel

Traffic congestion is perhaps a curse in many cities, and it kills valuable time on the one hand and degrades people's overall productivity and economic progress on the other hand. Since the main reason for traffic gridlocks on the roads is the overwhelming number of people who commute daily, limiting it to a reasonable extent is conceivably the best solution to curb the bad traffic. Though the government and city administration can not ask citizens to stay indoors and arrange the "work from home" facility for every professional, there are ways to implement it without creating confusion and dissatisfaction among citizens and curbing traffic problems at the same time. Since we need to reduce the number of commuters and vehicles on the road, which is the only viable solution to traffic problems, we can sort out the professionals who can work from home and then distribute the facilities like shopping centres, parks and banks to all residential areas so that people can get them within walking distance. For instance, IT professionals, lawyers, bookkeepers, customer service representatives, instructors and similar other professionals do not need to travel to their office daily as they can execute most of their responsibilities from home with the help of technology. This way the road traffic could be reduced to a great extent. Moreover, improving some facilities and digitalising many services can deter people from unnecessary daily commuting. For instance, many parents travel to their children's schools daily to drop them off and pick them up. If schools offer safe and convenient transportation facilities, parents would rely on such facilities rather than travelling daily. Similarly, banking, utility bill payment and help desk should be digitalised so that we can complete our tasks from home rather than visiting those offices. Thus the movement of people would be restricted and the traffic problem would be reduced. To conclude, traffic congestion in many cities is so big a problem that the authority is struggling to keep it under control. A large number of commuters and the vehicles they use are the primary reason for that, and it is expected that the government would facilitate people so that they need to commute less frequently.