Car ownership has increased so rapidly over the past thirty years that many cities in the world are now ‘one big traffic jam’. • How true do you think this statement is? • What measures can governments take to discourage people from using their cars? v.2

In past three decades more citizens of big towns became owners of the cars. Whilst the scale of the problem is a subject for debates, the outcomes are seen in traffic congestion throughout the whole cities. However, I would like to express my opinion about the problem and ways to overcome it by state services. To be personally honest, the problem of cars excess in municipalities is not only real but underestimated by the majority of people. To be specific, traffic jams is a part of problem that is seen on a surface. Moreover, abundance of cars brings problems not only with the utilization of space on the roads and streets, but parkings as well. In addition, lots of resources mainly fuel and metal are wasted on the vehicles when there are better options to spend them on. For example, courtyards and borders of streets in such European cities as Berlin or Moscow are full of cars so citizens can hardly enter their flats in their multi-storey residentals. The authority has several options to ameliorate the excessed possession of cars mainly revamp public transportation and raising taxes of the cars. Firstly, one of the reasons why people started to invest hardly in personal cars is that public transport is less convenient for them. If municipality governments make urban transportation service more variative and enhanced, citizens will give it a whack and, in some time, opt for it rather than personal cars. Secondly, cars became much more affordable nowadays. However, the quality and reliability of so cheap cars are doubtful. For instance, Chinese and Indian car manufacturers are producing very cheap but short-live cars. They pass the quality check when go out of assembly line but barely could do that after even a year of usage due to retrenchment on details. Consequently, the countries need to provide more severe and every year technical checks for every bought car and raise duties for them. Thereby, the inquiry for cheap cars will go down and less people will have cars in general because prices on good ones are high enough. To sum up, traffic congestion is evident problem for large municipality authorities. States need to tighten up cheap cars yearly tech control, raise duties on cars and improve public transportation making it more preferable for citizens.