IELTS: some people think building more roads can reduce traffic problems...

Topic: some people think building more roads can reduce traffic problems, what do you think?

The traffic problems have become one of the most serious issues around the world, which is considerably disturbing people nowadays. Someone claim that the problems can be reduced by building more roads, but I believe that some other crucial measures have to be taken to resolve the problems although building more roads can be helpful in some occasions.

Firstly, I won't deny that the traffic problems in some places are resulting from the scarcity of roads resources. In such cases, widening the existing streets or building more new roads would absolutely solve these problems to a certain extent.

However, road resource seems always limited while facing the dramatic increasing of population and transportation vehicles. In those big modern cities, millions of vehicles are crowding on the streets day and night. Meanwhile, thousands of new joiners are rushing into the "Traffic Jam Club" every day as well. On the contrary, in many cities where have serious traffic problems, there have been no much space for building or widening roads.

How can we cope with the situation? From my perspective, at least three measures have to be taken into account besides building more roads. The first one is controlling the traffic volume by setting a threshold to all non-public transportations, for example, raising the parking fees in those most crowded areas. The second one is to highly improve the convenience and efficiency of the public transportation system and lower the ticket price. The last one is to optimize the city plan, such as separating the outdoor functional areas which have been too much centralized in city centre.

To sum up, building more roads could be helpful in some places, but the rapidly increased population and vehicle volume should take more responsibilities to this problem, so some other measures such as traffic volume control, public transportation improvement and city plan optimization, have to be taken into account to address the traffic problems.

'disturbing people's life' seems better. Use other word such as 'alleviate' to replace 'reduce'. I think 'crucial measures' is not suitable here, how about 'effective measures'.


Actually, I think building more roads is different from widening the exsiting ones, so widening roads could be a better option for those cities without enough room and space to build new.


such as relocating the functional areas which have been centralized in city to rural areas.

Hi Chao,

Thanks for your comments, they are very useful to me:)

I'll give a few more ideas here...

I like the "alleviate" suggestion, even though "reduced" was okay:
Some people claim that the problems can be alleviated by building more roads, but I believe that some other crucial measures have to be taken to resolve the problems, although building more roads can be helpful in on some occasions.

No need for s with the word "transportation"------> The first one is controlling the traffic volume by setting a threshold to all non-public transportation, for example, raising the ...

To sum up, building more roads could be helpful in some places, but the rapidly... transportation improvement and city plan optimization, have to be taken into account to address the traffic problems.----This is good, but you should try to have at least 3 sentences in each paragraph.

:-)