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?

Nowadays it is commonly believe that increasing the price of petrol would solve traffic and pollution problems. I completely disagree with this idea and in this essay I will support my opinion with examples and propose some other measures.

Firstly I do not believe that increasing the price of fuel would improve traffic problems, not only that but new problems would appear. In public transport for example, the tickets would be more expensive and many people could not afford them. As a result, people who take the bus to go to work would rather travel by car which is more comfortable.

Another reason why I disagree with this measure is that over the last years the population have witnessed a considerably rose of the price of petrol and it made no difference when it comes to solving traffic and pollution problems. There are traffic jams in the roads that lead to the centre of cities and what is more, air pollution levels are still growing up, increasing the number of people suffering from respiratory diseases like asthma or lung cancer.

To tackle this issue, I think that the government should apply other kind of measures. In some cities traffic is restricted depending on the first letter of the car registration. For example, if your car registration begins with a vowel you can drive on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, whereas if it begins with a consonant you can drive on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Another solution would be to bring down the high cost of public transport tickets, encouraging people to use this mode of transportation instead of private car.

In conclusion, personally I think that long-term traffic and pollution problems would be solved or at least considerable reduced by improving the public transportation system.