gmatn00
Traffic in the central city is the number one complaint of our residents, so I urge you to consider this solution. We should invest in doubling our bus service and adding a light rail system, giving more options to those who don't want to drive through the city. Furthermore, we should make public transportation more accessible by reducing the fees to ride. With less traffic people will be more productive, and with higher productivity comes higher revenue and more taxes, so the system will likely pay for itself.
The author, trying to give a solution to the complaints against traffic, states that providing more public transport facility to people reduces traffic. The author furthermore adds that reduction in traffic increases tax revenue. The argument is flawed for the given reasons.
First, the author states that doubling the bus service and adding the light rail system reduces traffic by giving more options to people who don't want to drive through the city. The author makes a baseless assumption that people will travel in public transport to avoid traffic in the city. In addition, Increase in the public transport services is reasonable only if current services are completely utilized by people. There is no evidence showing the exhaustive utilization of the existing public transport services. The author's solution to increase the public transport facilities does not make any sense if the existing facilities are not completely being utilized.
Second, author states that reduction in public transport fee leads to reduction in traffic and increased revenue. He supports the statement by stating that reduction in traffic increases productivity, which leads to a higher revenue and more taxes. The author tries to justify the losses due to reduction in public transport fee with the increase in the revenue and taxes. He makes several unreliable assumptions with no proper evidence. There is no evidence that reduction in public transport fee would attract more people. There could be several other reasons, such as flexible timings and comfort of using a private vehicle, for public to not use public transport even though it is affordable. Reducing the price of public transport when it is already affordable for majority of public result only in mere loss with no improvement in traffic situations.
Third, the author correlates the traffic with the productivity of the employees without any proper evidence. He states a twofold cause and effect relation without any support to the statement. Reduction in traffic can increase the productivity of employees which can be understood from the general world scenarios. However, increase in productivity doesn't always result in higher revenue and taxes. There are many other factors, such as good working conditions for employees, which should be considered for the increase in revenue and the taxes. Even if there is an increase in the taxes received, there is no reason to think that the amount collected will be enough to recover from the loss from reduction in the fee of the public transport.
Finally, the argument is very weak and stands on too many base less assumptions. Implement the solution given by author by relying on the given argument is very unsafe and results in huge waste of investment and reduction in the revenue from the transport section. Increasing the number of buses without people taking the public transport increases the traffic and reduction of price of public transport makes the management of the increasing traffic more difficult. Therefore, the solution proposed by author is completely flawed. The argument would stand in a better place if the author had shown that less availability and higher prices of public transport as the reasons for people to not prefer public transport.
Para phrase the first paragraph more
Also length will be managed if you used more words in para 1
Don't rush to the flaws. Explain the problem properly