Prompt: Car ownership has increased so rapidly over the past thirty years that many cities in the world are now 'one big traffic jam'. Ċ How true do you think this statement is? What measures can governments take to discourage people from using their cars?

In the past thirty years, there has been an exponential growth in the number of car possessions. With the convenience offered by driving your own vehicle, this also poses the society into ‘one big traffic jam’ and in my opinion, the statement becomes truer in this modern era. This problem becomes more apparent to the countries that have a large sum of population and government interventions are needed to solve it. This problem and solutions will be elaborated in the following paragraphs. Ċ With a drastic increase in car ownership, it comes with a cost that puts every road user have to endure together. This might be caused by the growing statistic of affordable cars selections and add the customers' purchasing power. For example, in Indonesia, a cost-friendly family wagon, such as Diahatsu Xenia, has been everyone’s favourite because it can load up to 7 passengers and costs under 200,000,000 rupiah. In the past 10 years, more than a million Xenia cars have been sold in Indonesia. Ċ By having the traffic issue, the government has to take strategic measures in creating regulations to lessen the number of vehicles on the street. Placing a minimum amount of people in the automobile could result in fewer cars on the street and encourage people to carpool. For instance, in Jakarta, the local regulators put a base figure of 4 seats need to be filled so the car can pass through the metropolitan area. Better improvement in public transport also may cause people to opt to use it than driving their own transportation. In addition to basing the total of passenger, in the past five decades, the public transportation minister in Jakarta has been working to improve their public transportations to be more comfortable, safe, and reliable. As a result, in 2019, they successfully build MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) which proven to reduce the number of people on the street by 30%. Ċ In conclusion, with the rising of affordable cars, transportation problems are unavoidable, and it happens to other cities in the world, not only Jakarta. Strict regulations have to be imposed to minimize the amount of traffic on the road. Moreover, the government also has to improve its public transport systems for the people to see the benefit of taking one instead of their own vehicle.