We’ve seen the high water mark in terms of highway travel in this society because world oil supplies are declining quickly, and only new, crazy highs in oil prices will jump start oil exploration in the far reaches of the world where the few new supplies now lie. Hybrid cars and alternative fuels, while an important life line for providing some very limited driving capability in future years, will not lead to new, increased traffic levels as total miles driven will drop substantially. Ten to 15 years from now, we’ll be seeing vehicle miles probably drop 20 to 40 percent off of today’s levels. We are entering a new paradigm.
While Westwood Station is an interesting, high-density development partly organized around rail, it still seems to be counting on new highways as well as a continuing thirst for retail expansion in our society, and that’s a faulty hope.
At all levels our society is trying to perpetuate more of the same suburban, interstate way of living that cheap oil allowed us to enjoy since World War II, but due to the amazing drops in oil production/consumption coming soon (we’ll see US year-over-year drops of 6 to 9 percent annually and, in fact, that has already been the case 2008 to 2009) this continuation of more-of-the-same highway building nonsense will prove quite impossible to execute going forward.
Throwing printed, deficit-spending, federal dollars at these kinds of road projects in the face of severe oil decline will one day be seen by all as the complete lunacy that some of us can already perceive it to be. It may well be, however, that this society and government will have to learn this lesson the hard way.
