Dead End

In the small corner of the world "The Skeptic" calls home the local government plans to spend $25 million, before inevitable cost overruns, to expand a nearby road. The road in question was virtually a white elephant when it was built just over twenty years ago. Now it receives significant traffic as an outlet for new communities that have sprung up everywhere on every available piece of real estate. It all just sort of sprawls out in every direction. Our closest interstate highway is planned to widen from 4 lanes to 10 in the upcoming years. More millions to be invested in our drive everywhere for everything lifestyle.

These are just plain bad investments. Every person having their own vehicle or two, that they then have to drive to accomplish nearly any errand, is just not sustainable. No way. We are going to have to find ways to drive less and stop investing in our motoring past/present. Instead we need to invest in public transportation and rezone our communities to a walkable scale through multi-use zoning. It's painful to think we might have to change our lifestyles and sacrifice some comforts but we had better start having this conversation now when we can still plan ahead. More likely though that false comfort and blissful ignorance will persist amongst the populous until we have a full blown crisis. The crisis of course is end of the cheap oil era followed by price and supply destabilization. Technology is not going to save us.

We are at an inflection point in the history of the world. We can either look forward or throw good money after bad. Most will not want to admit that we have invested our national wealth in houses close to nothing, accessible only by car, in the twilight of the cheap oil era. Our entire infrastructure is built around our motor vehicles. We are going to need a miracle to sustain this. "The Skeptic" doesn't believe in miracles or fairy tales.