Many cities experienced a rapid economic growth would arrive at a common phenomenon of car-oriented transport nature and the common solution is to promote rail transport to mitigate the transport problem while implementing restrictions for vehicle access would help to reduce the usage of private cars. The discouragement of unnecessary private vehicle uses and promoting the use of public transport to minimise traffic congestion and roadside pollution is the objective of Transport Demand Management (TDM) (SUTP, 2011). The push and pull strategies in TDM consider two aspects to manage urban transport problem by improving public transport services to pull motorists out of their private vehicles or push strategy …show more content…
Although there are numerous benefits of implementing traffic-free area, the choice of traffic-free should match with the lifestyle of citizens and consensus should be reached enabling citizens can choose the traffic-free environment to improve their living place. The need of citizens or other stakeholders in the traffic-free zone should be considered so the traffic-free scheme can act as a facilitator to achieve public’s goal. Balancing mobility and living environment would be catered through improvement of other environmentally friendly transport modes to minimise roadside emission or promoting use of mass transit to use the road space …show more content…
Traffic-free and Walkability
The wider street design would create barriers to pedestrian movement and limit the area for walking to encourage making motorised trip in short-distance so with narrowing the road or restricting vehicular traffic accessibility could reduce the barrier to encourage walking so the walkability catchment can be extended.
By integrating the traffic-free concept and walkability, the superblock model implemented in Barcelona reconsidered the road hierarchy within 400m walking distance to a low speed zone and giving priority to non-motorised transport including walking and cycling as shown in Figure 2.1. The local network highlighted in green allows vehicular traffic to access only if motorists are residents or servicing vehicles for local business in the block with the maximum speed of 10km/h to suit for the pedestrian priority (VOX, 2017). The reasons of implementing this superblock model by Barcelona government are intolerable road accidents records, sedentary lifestyle resulting overweight of kids and insufficient green spaces (The Guardian,