Are public transportation services affordable to each and every person?

The transport system now-a-days is quite advanced and so travelling from one part of the country to another is highly convenient. Buses, taxis, MRT and a wide array of public transportation in most of the big cities of the world has a lot to offer to the travelers. But it’s a big question as to whether these systems are affordable to all.

One of the most important challenges in all developing countries, while planning the transportation system is to evaluate the proportion of income spent by poorer households on their transport. It is also vital to understand the transport patterns in relation to a residential location, travel distance and travel mode. The increasing price of the real estate in developing countries is continuously making the urban people in the low income category to live further out in the periphery. This is also bringing subsequent effects on the levels of motorization, physical activity, congestion, local air pollution and the expansion of urban poverty.

In actuality the public transport often remains un-affordable to the poorer section of the society. The main concern today is that if an urban resident’s income rises, they will first tend to choose automobiles as their main mode of transport. It is an absurd situation that in many emerging cities, low-income urban residents are still too poor to afford public transport.

There are several cities where poor people have to spend more than a fifth of their income to avail transport facilities. The highest fares of the public transport system means that they are out of the reach of many people who are at the bottom of the income pyramid. This shows clearly that the public transport in that city cannot meet its social objectives. This is a huge obstacle to their efforts to climb up the ladder of good living.

Not only that the urban areas are affected, the affordability of transport is also an issue in the developed countries. Most of the homeowners and renters are having a hard time to face the high transport costs in their search for affordable housing, often because they are forced to live in outlying areas with very few public transport options.

In most of the cities the housing costs around the distant suburban locations incline to be lower, transport costs can in turn be higher. In different countries, many homeowners and renters have opted to relocate from the city to the suburbs just thinking that they would get more affordable housing on the outskirts of the city with comparatively lower expenses. But this is also a fact that not only is the cost of living in the place an important factor, the transport-related costs are also a concern, and these tend to be more difficult to estimate than housing costs. This result of the people who migrate to the suburbs end up trading relatively high housing costs just because of the high transport costs.

So it’s often seen that the suburban residents spend more on transport than they generally spend on the rent or the mortgage. Many researches have ascertained that the transport service in several big cities has grown manifold, but the development has brought on the rise of the prices as well making it difficult for the poorer section of the society.

Martin Luther has travelled to different countries in the world. His travel experience brought him the knowledge that the transport service in Singapore is quite popular. It is known to be one of the most cost-efficient and advanced one in the world. So the other cities must also adapt the same pattern sooner or later.