A Research On Controlling Urban Traffic Congestion On The Base Of Public Governance Theory

Urban traffic is the link connecting the entire city, and has very close relationship withpeople’s life. With the rapid development of urbanization and modernization, urban trafficcongestion problems become more and more serious, which restrict sustainable economic andsocial development.On the one hand, with the social and economic development and continuous improvementof people’s income level, the volume of private car ownership increases rapidly. Automobileindustry as one of the three pillar industries of national economy, which plays an important rolein China’s economic development. Our government has committed to the development ofautomobile industry, which also promotes the development of private transport, and thenaggravates traffic congestion problems more serious. On the other hand, public transport hasbeen recognized as the main way to solve the urban traffic congestion. Although China hasestablished the priority policy of public transport and proposed the “Public transport priority”strategy. However, in fact, the development of urban public transport, compared with foreigncities, are unable to meet people’s requirements and far behind the rapid growth of privatetransport. In this article, the author consider the urban road resources as scarce public resources,the rapid development of private transport will certainly occupy the public resources that belongsto public transport, so the private transport and public transport are in a competitive relationship.So, the local government’s responsibility is how to coordinate the benefits between privatetransport and public transport on the base of restricted road resources. The traditional governancehad always sought the solution to traffic congestion passively, which made urban trafficcongestion into vicious cycle “governance-ease-broke out-again governance” and did notfind t the most fundamental reason.So, how to coordinate the competitive relationship between private transport and publictransport on the base of limited road resources. Traditional governance has been committed toseek treatment measures from the passive object, which let urban traffic control fall into avicious cycle:“governance-ease-eruption-and then governance”. The author believe that thereare various reasons for the governance failures, however, the most fundamental reason is that wedon’t realize the urban road resources as a public resource and take corresponding measures. Thearticle refers to “tragedy of the commons” to explain the current urban traffic congestionproblem. The government should change its functions from the perspective of public governance,and the relevant benefits should also be incorporated into the governance of urban traffic congestion, and then establish a unified and coordinated multi-center subjects management ofurban traffic congestion.