Safety and security of public transit Research Paper

Safety and security of public transit - Research Paper Example Access to jobs, healthcare, and other services hinges upon access to reliable, affordable, and efficient public transit for masses. The increased use of public transit in both developed and developing countries show that people clearly value public transit. The availability of public transport is quite important for people with limited incomes. Public transit has its own importance. It can strengthens the economy, creates jobs, reduces traffic congestion, travel times and air pollution in case of rapid transit and save energy and oil consumption, if public investments are increased in this area. Today, transit system development is being used as a tool to encourage business growth, reduce sprawl, create a sense of community, rejuvenate obsolete towns and declining cities, and also enlargetax revenues for the authorities. Scale of the issue: Safety and security must have equal consideration along with economic and environmental aspect no matter what transport mode is being used. An ac cident caused by a bit of negligence reduces confidence in the safety of transport system. Accidents can lead to injuries and deaths and so does massive environmental changes takes place due to it. Significant commercial and financial consequences are likely to happen. Matters are often brought before courts and a criminal prosecution takes place which not only ruins one’s career but their life’s as well. Worldwide there are estimated to be approximately one million road accident casualties each year and around 10 million people are injured, many with long term disabilities (World Health Report 1999). Accidents are usually a combination of unrelated events and in many modes human element is the significant in this casual chain. People rarely make mistakes intentionally but these unintended mistakes and blunders lead to huge consequences for which someone has to pay the price of it. Most important transport problems take place when transport systems for any reasons is n ot ablesatisfy the requirements of mobility and such problems usually takes place in urban areas where there is large density. Productivity of any nation today is largely dependent on the efficiency of its transport system. This is because today transit system is required to move labor, consumers and goods from multiple sources to multiple destinations. In most parts of the world especially in developing countries public transit systems are either over or under used (Mitechelle, Daniel, 2005). During peak hours public transit system has to cope with the large amount of potential passenger while this creates a discomfort among the passengers due to the large crowd. Transport services are unable to cover their operating costs at times due to low fare rates this makes them financially unstable and infeasible. Every public transit systems cannot generate sufficient income to cover its operating costs although numerous efforts have been done to cover the operating costs like cross-financ ing and provision of subsidies from the government. Some public transportation is quite expensive e.g.taxis, airports supershuttles and these are used for limited purposes. People prefer to use bus or rail as the transit system. One factor thatinfluences the degree to which the public will use mass transit is reliability. Reliability is associated with labor relations. Strike on