IELTS Writing Task 2 Cities and transport Essay Topics

Position

Agree as a default. A house without a frequent service is a house that quietly requires a car, and the cost of that car is pushed onto the household and the road.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A development of three hundred homes on a field creates three hundred morning trips, and a bus that runs twice a day will not carry them.

Explanation

The brochure calls the place peaceful. The resident discovers the second fare is a loan for a car, because the shift starts before the first bus and the shop is a drive away. Building only where the service already runs forces the transport question before the concrete is poured.

Example

An estate whose nearest bus was hourly and ended at seven, so the evening hospital shift was possible only by car.

Body paragraph 2

Point

A rigid "only where the bus already is" rule can freeze housing out of towns that would fund a route if the homes came with a contract for the service.

Explanation

The limit is the order. Homes first and a promised route later usually means homes and no route. Homes and a funded timetable, written into the permission, is different from homes on a wish. I would allow the second and refuse the first.

Example

A planning consent that withheld the keys until the new quarter-hour bus had run for a month, rather than a leaflet saying a route was "proposed".

Conclusion

Put the houses where the frequent service already exists, or do not hand over the keys until that service is real.

Position

Move space to bicycles on the short, flat, congested streets where a protected lane will actually be used. Leave priority with cars on roads where a painted line would only create a new conflict.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A protected lane carries more people through a narrow centre than the same width used as a queue of single-occupant cars.

Explanation

The cyclists’ case is a capacity case. It fails if the lane is a symbol that ends at the junction where riders rejoin the lorries. It works when it is continuous, and when the trips are distances a rider can do in ordinary clothes.

Example

A two-kilometre lane, kerb-separated, from a station to an office district, that stayed full on a wet Tuesday.

Body paragraph 2

Point

Most journeys in many cities are still driven, including trips a bicycle will not do: a night shift, a frail passenger, a load.

Explanation

Taking the only lane those trips can use, in the name of a majority that does not match the street, strands the people who had no other tool. Priority for cars is a lazy slogan. So is priority for bikes on a hill no one will ride.

Example

A carer who could not move a client by bicycle, stuck beside a new lane that ended at a roundabout nobody would enter on two wheels.

Conclusion

Give bicycles the streets they can really replace a car on. Do not spend the only remaining lane on a gesture.

Position

A new town can offer a home with a door and a small garden at a price a flat in the old centre no longer has. It becomes a dormitory with a jammed approach road if the jobs and the school do not move with the houses.

Body paragraph 1

Point

Land outside the built-up edge is where a modest house can still be afforded by a household on ordinary wages.

Explanation

The advantage is the price and the space, not a rural fantasy. A family that needs two bedrooms and was outbid in the centre gets a door. That is a real gain if the town has its own shop, school and a job within a short ride.

Example

A two-bedroom house at a mortgage a nurse could sign, ten minutes from a clinic that had opened on the same site.

Body paragraph 2

Point

If the jobs stay in the old centre, the new town exports its morning to a single road.

Explanation

The disadvantage arrives at 7.30. Every garage produces a car because the train was "phase two". The city then spends the saving from cheap land on widening the approach. Residents have a garden and a ninety-minute each-way day.

Example

A town of five thousand homes with one A-road to the city, and a station still described as planned five years after the first keys.

Conclusion

Build the town when the clinic, the school and the station are in the first phase. A field of houses alone is a disadvantage with a sales office.

Position

The cause is jobs clustered in a centre and homes priced out of it, plus a peak that everyone is told to hit. The remedies are homes nearer the jobs and employers who can spread start times.

Body paragraph 1

Point

People travel the extra hour because the wage is in one postcode and the rent they can pay is in another.

Explanation

A faster train helps only if it is frequent and the fare is a fraction of the wage. Often the long commute is a slow bus chosen because the train costs a day of pay a week. The cause sits in the gap between the two prices, not in a mysterious love of travel.

Example

A kitchen worker who rode two buses for seventy minutes because a room near the restaurant was a whole weekly wage.

Body paragraph 2

Point

Employers can stagger starts, and cities can refuse new job space that does not come with a home someone on that wage can rent.

Explanation

Staggering does not shorten the distance. It stops the distance being sat in a queue. Housing tied to the job space attacks the distance itself. A new road attacks neither if the same people must still arrive at nine.

Example

A hospital that moved a fifth of shifts to a 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. start, and a consent that required rented rooms within two bus stops of a new office.

Conclusion

The hour is a price gap plus a herd of start times. Close the gap where you can, and stop sending everyone onto the same train.

Position

The pattern happens because schools, offices and shifts share a clock. Employers who can move the clock without wrecking a service should do it. Employers who run a ward or a shop front often cannot.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A shared start compresses a day’s travel into forty minutes of vehicle capacity.

Explanation

The train is sized for the average, not the peak, or it is sized for the peak and paid for by empty seats later. Schools add parents’ cars to the same window. The pattern is a timetable coincidence, not proof that the city needs twice the fleet all day.

Example

A line that was full at 8.10 and had seats at 9.10, with the school bell and the office start ten minutes apart.

Body paragraph 2

Point

Moving desk starts by an hour fills the empty train. Moving a ward round or a shop opening does not, because the public arrives at a time the employer does not choose.

Explanation

The useful answer is selective. Back-office teams can start at ten. A breakfast café cannot. A rule aimed at every employer will be ignored by the ones whose customers are the clock, and resented by staff who do the school run.

Example

An insurer that shifted claims staff to 10 a.m., while the hospital next door kept the 7 a.m. handover because patients did not move their illnesses.

Conclusion

The crush is a shared clock. Change it for work that has no public at the door. Leave the rest, and do not buy a second fleet to flatter a habit.

Position

Negative on the street that receives the trips, and only partly offset by the convenience for the person who no longer carries the shopping home.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A van stopping at successive doors replaces one weekly shop trip with a dozen engine-on pauses outside kitchens.

Explanation

The resident gains a parcel. The street gains idling, a blocked pram, and a corner that is less safe for a child who cannot see past the vehicle. The development scales with the orders. Each order looks small. The route does not.

Example

A cul-de-sac that had three vans an hour at tea-time, each waiting with the door open while the driver found one parcel.

Body paragraph 2

Point

For a household without a car, or a person who cannot carry a load, the same trip is access rather than laziness.

Explanation

That benefit is real and should not be sneered at. It does not require the current pattern of one van per retailer, half empty, on the same hour. A collection point on the corner keeps the access and removes most of the doors.

Example

A neighbour who could not lift a weekly shop, and who could walk to a locker at the end of the road more easily than she could dodge the vans.

Conclusion

Door-to-door vans on residential streets are a negative development. Keep the access. Lose the queue of engines.