Increasing the price of petrol is the best way to solve growing traffic and pollution problems.
To what extent do you agree or disagree?
What other measures do you think might be effective?
Traffic congestion and air pollution are the problems that many countries all over the world have been facing over recent years. Some people believe that the price of petrol should be increased in order to sort these problems out. In my view, this cannot be the best way as these problems could be improved efficiently with other reasonable measures.
Or
I am strongly inclined to believe that higher petrol prices will have serious drawbacks on our society.
Firstly, oil and gas play a fundamental role in the industry, since most of the heavy machinery used in different industries are operated by petrol. For example, a recent study conducted in Japan has revealed that the nearly 80% of all businesses are sensitive to the price of petrol. In addition, higher prices of petrol will indirectly influence the prices of the various goods in the market through increasing the cost of their transportation. Lastly, this will burden the people and limit their freedom to travel to enjoy their leisure time. Undoubtedly, the growth of oil and gas prices will create new problems.
However, there are several measures which can be done by governments. A good approach is to improve and develop the public transport facilities so that people feel comfort to use them. The second way could be restriction of some areas in city for using cars, for example, city centers and the places where the traffic is higher. Another measure is related to payment for parking. By doing this people would have to choose another ways for travelling which could be cheaper. The other measure is to educate people about the benefits of using public transport instead of personal cars and the drawbacks of increasing the use of cars. Besides, a cleaner fuel could be a good way for improving the problem of pollution which needs to be developed.
In conclusion, I think that long-term traffic and pollution reductions would depend on educating the public to use public transport more, and on governments using public money to construct and run efficient systems.