to ease the perennial traffic snarls and the concomitant ill-effects on its citizens, the Japanese city of Kamakura has prepared a new draft strategy - congestion pricing. In other words, drivers wanting to motor through Kamakura, a busy tourist attraction, will have to pay toll at nine different booths to be set up throughout the city.
"The idea is to ease traffic congestion by limiting car use, rather than by building more roads," said Yoji Takahatshi, professor of transport planning at the Tokyo University of Mercantile Marine. The plans include certain incentives for the drivers to give up their cars and adopt the public transport; free parking for those who leave their cars at the toll gates and discount tickets for trams and buses to continue their trips downtown.
Bus-lanes in the heart of the city are to be expanded and minibus services are to be introduced. The congestion-pricing scheme will undergo tests late this year.
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