THE PROBLEM OF TRANSPORT.

What are cities for- cars or people? Do people without cars not matter at all? In some cities, such as Los Angeles, it is impossible to live without a car. A friend of mine used to live opposite a supermarket in Los Angeles. Unfortunately the road was a six- lane motorway, and there was no way of crossing it. She had to drive two miles to a clover- leaf junction where she was able to turn round, drive two miles back and buy her food. By the time she reached her home again, she'd driven eight miles to cross the road!

All large cities have the problem of transport. In some of them people think that the only answer is to forbid cars from coming into the centre of the city. But then what will all the people do? There must be better public transport, with more buses and underground trains. Perhaps we will have more monorails like they have in Tokyo. In London, Oxford Street, one of the most important and busy roads in the capital is closed to private cars, and a lot of roads have special lanes for buses. This helps traffic to move more freely, and stops traffic jams.

Which is better?

Which is better- to drive on the left or the right? Or do you think it doesn't really matter? If so- you're wrong. American scientists say that cars driving on the right-hand side of the road probably help to make tornadoes-strong winds going around in circles. The Americans say that cars and trucks going very fast past each other make the air turn anti-clockwise. The air in tornadoes turns anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere the air goes clockwise. So cars in the USA must drive on the left and cars in Australia, for example, must drive on the right. There are about 2.5 million cars moving on the roads in the USA at any given moment. The air that they move is probably enough to change the movement of the atmosphere. Between 1933 and 1973 there were six times as many tornadoes in the USA than there were before. These 40 years were the years when every day more and more people started driving cars. The scientists also say that there are not so many tornadoes on Saturdays. The times when traffic is heaviest are during the week when people go to work and on Sundays when many people go for a drive. This news is a surprising answer to the old arguments on the question of "right" and "left".

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 1746