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BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 573
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 573 – PASSAGE – 2
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 573
READING PASSAGE – 2
Transportation Shapes Cities
A. Just as a human body relies on its network of vessels to circulate blood to its organs, a city depends on its transportation system to move people and goods to jobs, schools, and stores. Researchers Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy have examined transportation trends between 1970 and 1990 in 47 major metropolitan areas to reveal differences in the “health” of urban transportation in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America.
B. One measure of a robust transportation system is the diversity of travel modes. U.S. cities are dominated by a single mode: the private car. On average, each person in the U.S. cities sampled in 1990 logged 10,870 kilometres (6,750 miles) of city driving more than a round trip across North America. Growth in car use in the U.S. cities between 1980 and 1990 was 2,000 kilometres per person, nearly double the increase in the Canadian cities, which have the next highest driving level.
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In industrial countries, urban car use has tended to rise as population density has declined. U.S. cities have led the trend toward dispersed, low-density development. Between 1983 and 1990, the average roundtrip commute to work in the United States grew 25 percent, to 17 kilometres (11 miles). As cities sprawl, cars become essential while transit, bicycling, and walking become less practical. Compact Asian and European cities thus have the highest levels of non-motorized transport.
C. As car use rises, car-related problems mount. Fatal crashes, for example, increase. The exception is cities in developing countries, where low car use is offset by poor signals and safety regulations. Nonetheless, highly car-reliant U.S. cities exceed even developing Asian cities in per capita traffic fatalities. Worldwide, traffic accidents kill some 885,000 people each year equivalent to 10 fatal jumbo jet crashes per day and injure many times more.
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D. Car-choked cities also lose time and money in traffic jams. Wasted fuel and lost productivity cost $74 billion annually in U.S. metro areas. But new roads attract more cars, so regions that have invested heavily in road construction have fared no better at easing congestion than those that have invested less.
E. Building more roads also worsens environmental damage. Cars burn more fossil fuels per person than any other type of urban transport. Toxic ingredients in car fumes carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, fine particles, and sometimes lead are a major source of urban air pollution. Nitrogen and sulfur that travel beyond the city acidify lakes, forests, and farms, while carbon contributes to global climate change.
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And cars devour not just energy, but land. Each car needs as much road as 4-8 bicycles and as much parking as 20 bikes. Roads and parking may pave over as much as one third of car-reliant cities. A city’s water quality and quantity suffer in proportion to the amount of paved roads and parking that cover its watershed.
F. A recent World Bank study suggests that the high costs of automobile dependence outweigh the benefits of car transportation, eroding economic development in the United States, a 1998 survey of leading real estate investors and analysts came to a similar conclusion: denser cities that boast alternatives to the car are better investment bets than sprawling suburban agglomerations.
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G. Coordinated transportation and land use policies, both local and national, can lessen the need for travel and boost transportation options. In the Netherlands, for instance, cities follow a national “ABC” policy to steer new development to easily accessible W locations, which are the best served by public transit and bicycle paths.
H. Local and national governments can also adjust road and parking fees to reflect the high cost of car use and limit unnecessary trips. For more than 20 years, down-town bound drivers in Singapore have paid a fee that rises during rush hours; since 1998, the fee has been automatically deducted from an electronic card. In the United States, state and national policies are beginning to target parking subsidies, worth $31.5 billion a year. A 1992 California law requires employers who offer free parking to also provide a cash alternative; this spurred a 17-percent drop in solo driving at several firms. In 1998, a national transportation act changed the tax code to support these “cash-outs”.
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I. Decoupling car ownership from car use removes incentives to drive. Once a person pays for a car, he may want to use it as much as possible to get his money’s worth. New car-sharing networks eliminate that desire by providing easy access to a car, without the costs of owning or the hassles of renting. More than 100,000 people participate in car sharing in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Italy is set to join the club in 1999 with national incentives for cities to organize electric car sharing services.
J. Such innovations are becoming more important as we approach the point, sometime during the next decade, when more than half the world will live in urban areas. Nearly 90 percent of the 2.7 billion people due to be added to world population between 1995 and 2030 will live in cities of the developing world. Car-reliant U.S. cities have the greatest potential to diversify. At present, they offer a poor model for the many cities that will be building and expanding their transportation systems in the years to come.
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Questions 14-18
Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs A-E.
Write appropriate numbers (i-x).
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.
List of Headings
i. Metro Gains and Losses
ii. Cars Change the Environment
iii. Healthy Transport
iv. Deadly Cities
v. A Robust Transportation
vi. Practical and unpractical
vii. Diversified vs. Single
viii. Cars up, people down
ix. Cost of Congestion
x. More Roads?
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14. Paragraph A
15. Paragraph B
16. Paragraph C
17. Paragraph D
18. Paragraph E
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Questions 19-22
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the writer
NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage.
19. The average person in the US drove 6,750 kilometres in 1990.
20. On average commuters lived 8.4 kilometres from work in 1990.
21. You are more likely to have a fatal accident in a plane than in a car.
22. Houses in high density cities are more expensive than in low density suburban developments.
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Questions 23-26
Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
23. Car drivers in Singapore pay a rush fee when they are ……………….
24. A consequence of the cash alternative to free parking in California was a reduction in ……………….
25. Europeans are increasingly joining in car-sharing networks with Italians pioneering specifically in ……………….
26. The majority of the future world population will be found in ……………….
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ANSWERS
14. III
15. VII
16. VIII
17. IX
18. II
19. NO
20. YES
21. NOT GIVEN
22. NOT GIVEN
23. DOWN-TOWN BOUND
24. SOLO DRIVING
25. ELECTRIC CAR(S)
26. URBAN AREAS
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