Should governments spend more money on improving roads and highways, or should governments spend more money on improving public transportations (buses, trains, subways)? Why?

Getting advanced, transportation is one of the most important needs in our modern society. There are so many different means of transportation that are divided into two major categories: public transportation and highways. In my opinion the first one has the greater importance than the last one, because of some critical reasons. Public transportation can help us reduce traffic jams and resulted pollution while average waste time of the society dramatically inclines. Besides, there are some alternatives for highways and intercity roads, while one yet can use the roads, too.

Traffic jam in so many metropolitan is a regular scene nowadays. There is no doubt that one of the bad results of the heavy traffic jams can be the air pollution, while the traffic jams themselves are caused by high rate of individual vehicle use. So, one way to reduce the pollution is to reduce the number of the cars in our streets by means of improvement in public transportation. For example, Tehran, the capital of Iran, has a subway network that manipulates so many passengers within a day and there is no sign of traffic on the surface of the city in the places once have been crowded.

Another bad effect of traffic jams is wasting of time. While you are stuck in a heavy traffic, you have to wait till the way is open. Hardly ever, this time that you spent in your car could be used in a proper way and that is what one calls “wasted time”. Public transportation may have some bad properties; nevertheless, it has so many benefits like faster movement compared with stuck individual cars. You also may have to wait a little for the next bus, train or subway wagon but, at least, you escape from areas of congestion.

Besides, there are some superseded ways of transportation that are in use between cities either in short or long distances like trains and airplanes. For a short trip to an adjacent town, you can use an intercity train instead of your own car and similarly, for a longer distance you can use an airline service instead of driving. So, as one can see, these alternatives ease our relocation without any need to spend a lot of money on improving highways and suburban roads.

From what we have discussed above, we may safely draw the conclusion that spending money on some means of public transportation preponderate to spend a huge amount of money on roads between towns. Spending the money for these purposes, the government is saving our lives and makes our city a tranquil and cool place to live that, I think, is the apex point in everyone’s demands.