TOEFL® essay: The only way to reduce the amount of traffic...

[Gianglt]

The only way to reduce the amount of traffic in cities today is by reducing the need for people to travel from home for work, education or shopping. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

TOEFL essay

Nowadays, reducing the amount of traffic in cities is one of solutions for problems like saving energy and preventing the environmental pollution. There is a debating measure by reducing the need for people to travel from home for work, education or shopping. It is easy to see advantages and disadvantages of this suggestion, and that it is definitely not the only way to solve problems.

On the one hand, we are living in a modern society and have enough abilities to apply this solution. Thanks to developments in information technology, networks are being built and connecting people from different corners in the world. Distance-learning helps pupils attend classes without going to schools. Remote applications are widely used in offices, they allow many people work more effectively and have more time with their families. Online transactions in shopping are now not a dream but the reality. Moreover, they become more and more convenient for most of people.

On the other hand, there are some disadvantages in forcing people to sit at home and contact to each other remotely. Firstly, most people have not such a good condition to work with computers due to their financial and educational abilities. Secondly, many jobs require people working in group at the same place, so these people should commute many times in a day to go to work and return home. Moreover, many people prefer traditional life style. They use to gather together, have their activities in groups and use traditional means of transport.

Finally, we should restate that there are other ways to reduce the overload of cities' roads. Firstly, governments can introduce the public transport, which immediately reduce the number of vehicles, commuting in cities. Secondly, new means of transports using polar energy or cell energy are being studied and will soon appear on markets. At the present, the least thing governments can do is planning new transport systems, making them more scientific and comfortable.

Reducing the amount of traffic in cities by providing new conditions, which help reduce the need of people in commuting, is an interesting and realistic idea. It has some advantages as well as disadvantages and besides it, we can apply other measures to solve the problems and give society a wide range of choices. Whatever a solution is, it should place society's interest in the first order of attention.

TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between two university students (1)

[Alan]

Hi,

[Gianglt]

Thank you very much, Mr. Alan