Peak Travel has probably been reached with the current paradigm. There is still plenty of energy for travel if we change paradigms. The physics is simple, it costs less to move less. In congested, repetitive travel, why are we moving a ton to move a person?

We can build a physical-internet. This is the application of ultra-light rail networks.

Here is a link to the CSX commercial where they ask the reasonable question, "How much can a 50 miles per gallon vehicle (Prius) do for the environment?" And answer it as the Prius drives onto a rail car "not as much as the car that carries it." As they explain how they can move a ton of freight 423 miles on a gallon of fuel.

Morgantown's Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system opened in 1975. It has delivered 110 million injury-free, electrically powered passenger miles.

Masdar, the zero-carbon city, is being built with PRT as the internal transport system.

Heathrow is being expanded using PRT.

PB-244854, from the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment in 1975 sketched how PRT can make our cities independent of foreign oil.

Booz, Allen, Hamilton's study in 2007 for the State of New Jersey affirms the findings of PB=244854. There are similar finding by the EU.

Anyone interested in contacts in this effort to re-tool to sustainable transportation, please contact me. My email is listed.

Thanks
Bill James

Thanks for the post Jason.

While we're quoting song lyrics, here is an excerpt from the appropriately titled 'Rising Down' on the recently released album of the same name by Philadelphia's The Roots. There is certainly a sense of urgency here:

Between the greenhouse gases and earth spinnin' off its axis
Got Mother Nature doin' backflips 'n' natural disasters
It's like 80 degrees in Alaska, you in trouble if you're not an Onassis
It ain't hard to tell that the conditions is drastic
Just turn on the telly, check for the news flashin'
How you want it bagged, paper or plastic?
Lost in translation or just lost in traffic
Yo, I don't wanna floss I done lost my passion
and I ain't trying to climb, yo, I lost my traction

Note: 'to floss' can be defined as showing off something that is or appears to be of high value, specifically an automobile.

Thanks for the information Prof. Goose, I would lke to see a graph similar t this that represents Peak Stupidity. I wonder if we have passed that point also ?

Enjoyed your interview with Jeff the other day.
Thanks.

Rat

Native American males on the plains would paint themselves, run off their high spirits on horseback and then glorify it with song. That was sustainable. Our mistake was to "energize" the same need for release with machines and fuel that could not be sustainably used (still glorifying it with song). The challenge now is to come up with new ways of letting off steam that do not contract our future options.

Total Travel Miles = F ( (-)energy costs, (+)fuel efficiency, (-)distance between home/goods/services/workplace/recreationplace, (neutral?)availability of transport alternatives (mass transit/bike), (-)availability of substitute travel goods (internet/telephone/other) )

I just made that up. Make your own equation. Clearly energy costs drive travel miles down... but energy costs can go much higher and travel miles can still increase.

For example economic changes driven by energy costs may cause people to devalue central city locations and continue to drive them further away from the city... while controlling costs by buying much more efficient cars... resulting in more travel miles even in a higher energy cost environment.

The general proposition that energy costs will decrease travel miles is probably correct... but one can imagine complex effects in a changing economy that mitigate that effect... or even produce counterintuitive results.

Have you hit the share this button today? :) Danke.

I'd like to ask a question.
How does the "Government" know how many miles are driven on the highways? It appears to me that everyone just accepts the numbers put out by the Government without questioning the methodoligy of the numbers acquisition.
I don't "report" my miles driven to the government, do you? If they are guessing using fuel purchased and average fuel milage, then a chance in average fuel milage could throw off their numbers?
I don't say I flat don't believe their numbers, I am just questioning if there is a possibility that their numbers of miles driven could be wrong?

Start by realistically taxing trucks based on their impact on the interstates. Impossible, of course, given all the drivers currently going out of business due to high diesel prices.

Turn all interstates into toll roads and charge proportionate to weight and gas mileage. Provide a transponder to all who desire to use the interstate. Works like a dream on the current toll road to the Denver Airport. People can continue to race in the streets if they so desire and can afford the gas. This would be over and above the current gas tax. Provide flexibility so that this could be raised and lowered depending upon traffic patterns and revenue needs. Our current system with a fixed amount regardless of price of gas is absurd. We certainly don't tax other goods that way.

Do not, under any circumstances, provide disincentives to those who choose to purchase vehicles with good gas mileage. Do not simply charge based upon miles traveled without regard to weight and gas mileage.

Long term. Convert interstates or portions thereof to rail. Those who want to travel cross country in their cars can load their cars onto the trains. This has already been done for ferrys and certain rail routes.

Even longer term. Shut down the interstates; the cost to maintain them will just be too great.

Under the current paradigm, peak travel has been reached. But, it is a dual dynamic, both price and preferrence. Even if prices return towards cost, demand may not improve. People are eagerly becoming reluctant to , for example, to spew thousands of pounds of carbon into the atmosphere on trips to 'vanishing coral reefs,' 'ski Kilimanjaro, etc. Probably, dirigibles are the way onward

The great irony of this press release is that it calls for a way to continually expand funding of highways while people are finally using them less and public transportation more!

They are rightly worried. The American consumer eats most of that driving as food-miles. As the revenue from gas tax decline they still have to keep maintaining the same number of highway miles and bridges that they have built for a long time yet. And you only need one pothole to brake the axle of coast-to-coast salad dressing truck and that will be the end of civilization as we know it...

One positive from this will be an end to the increase of a force for negative social change. As explained in my 1998 article "Impending Social and Economic Catastrophe due to Excessive Cars and Roads" which was totally ignored by the UK government and not one jot of fault ever shown in its arguments.
PS- As its point is now merely academic I suggest not reading it if you need to get on with more currently-relevant studying instead.

It's because they haven't suspended the gas tax! Do that, everyone will travel again, and we'll have plenty of taxes to fix the roads.

Oh, wait...

Even at $4.60 fuel costs for my motorcycle are still affordable. It hasn't hurt my personal mobility much, but hitting the road just for fun doesn't have the same appeal as it used to have.

Wow I hadnt realized it had gotten that bad so quickly. We need to see the 1970s included in these kinds of charts, for sake of comparison.

In looking at commercial air travel in the US at the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, we see a mixed message, though the data is only available for March;

Passenger Revenue Miles:
- March 2007 = 72,698,045
- March 2008 = 73,689,383

Revenue Aircraft Miles:
- March 2007 = 647,456
- March 2008 = 645,358

So fewer miles are flown, but the airlines are getting better at filling empty seats.

While this data is mixed, the future of airline travel is a foregone conclusion, however.

If travel broadens the mind then lack of travel could have the opposite effect. It could also be bad for the gene pool. Whole countries could consist of pockets of inbreds who are ignorant of the wider world and cling to fundamentalist religions. The next generation of kids will have to be smarter than their parents and grandparents. Yet they may never get the mental stimulus of camping in the woods, visiting opposite coastlines of their home country or experiencing a foreign language country. If Peak Oil means cutting back on steak or air conditioning that may not be so bad. By cutting back on 'healthy' travel we could be making ourselves less ready for times ahead.

The car does more than get you between home and work. It represents freedom, sex, power, fun, status, and if need be a way to fly away from your troubles, at least temporarily.

The importance of this statment cannot be ignored. For those of us who wish to change society we must change this ingraned cultural value, at least in the US. Luckally it seems like the internet and cell phones seem to be the 21st century "technologies of freedom". If this cultural shift can be made more complete it may become easier for people to give up some of their physical mobility in exhange for virtual mobility.

The UK office of national statistics claims that car travel dropped 2% but that commercial traffic was up so that overall there was no change. They state: "The provisional figures indicate that there was no overall change in estimated levels between the first quarters of 2007 and 2008. The bulletin includes analyses by vehicle type and road class. Key results include: Between the first quarters of 2007 and 2008;

Car traffic decreased by 2 per cent
Light van traffic increased by 6 per cent
Heavy goods vehicle traffic increased by 3 per cent
Traffic on motorways increased by 2 per cent
Traffic on both rural 'A' roads and minor rural roads increased by 1 per cent
Traffic on both urban 'A' roads and minor urban roads fell by 2 per cent"

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/roadstraffic...

Not sure I believe this conclusion but make of it what you will as petrol & diesel increased in price by about 25% over this period. Would expect rural roads to show a decrease but then maybe it is just statistical noise.

They just don't get it, do they? They just can't grasp that declining VMT means that we aren't going to NEED all of that additional highway construction, and maybe aren't even going to need to spend as much on maintenance as they thought. Why keep six lanes open at 70mph when we might only need two lanes at 40mph?

There is just a total disconnect in their minds between the extrapolation of past exponential trends that they have been operating under, and the reality that the data now shows.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/051006_peak_traffic.shtml
Peak Traffic:
Planning NAFTA Superhighways at the End of the Age of Oil
by Mark Robinowitz

May 10, 2006

http://www.road-scholar.org
Peak Traffic and Freeway Fights

As the world passes the peak of global petroleum production, gasoline prices are likely to increase to the point that traffic demands on roads will be reduced. While it is impossible to accurately predict the price of fossil fuels five, ten, or twenty years in the future, it will be surprising if gasoline is not rationed on the downslope of the Peak Oil curve (either directly by ration cards or indirectly by pricing it out of reach of many who currently consume it). US federal transportation law requires that new federal-aid highway projects consider the traffic demand twenty years in the future -- so the reality of Peak Oil and climate change means that the continent wide rush to build more bypasses, Outer Beltways and NAFTA Superhighways will not be needed. This website suggests some political and legal strategies to prevent this trillion dollar misallocation of resources.

Just finished a cross-country trip, moving the family from Montana to Texas. We made it out of Montana and halfway through Wyoming before I saw the first RV on the road. Traffic was really sparse. I told my wife "things aren't ever going to be the way they used to be."

It will be interesting to see how peak travel affects sports, both professional and amateur. How much oil is used to fly the Lakers around the country through the fall, winter, spring and early summer? What do the fans need to drive across LA to the games? Will the Baylor football team still play pre-season games in LA in 2020 or perhaps move at a closer venue such as Boone Pickens Stadium? What if the professional tennis players cannot find flights to the 2nd tier tournaments between Wimbledon and the Australian Open. I recall traveling several thousand miles by bus and car as a participant and fan while in high school - from Amarillo to ElPaso to Austin to Odessa to Dallas etc. ---with occasional short trips to Pampa. What will the soccer moms do?
-- Is anyone planning a ski trip to Aspen next winter?

It is not yet peak travel. It may be peak driving for the US and Australia.

"Driving" is not all that there is to "travel".

What would be interesting to see is not the driving figures alone, but compared with the airline, public transport, cycling and walking figures. Then we would know if people are travelling by other means, or simply staying at home.

Knowing whether people will change or just give up gives us useful clues for the future.

The NAFTA Superhighways are very real - but it is not ONE highway plan, it is a large network of new highways and expanded (existing) highways.

The 1991 ISTEA (Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act) specified the first iteration of the "NAFTA Superhighway." This was to extend I-69 from Indianapolis (it's current southern terminus) all the way to Mexico. Highwaymen from several states who each wanted their local and regional boondoggles got together and petitioned Congress to create this full route as a national priority "corridor." The new I-69 is planned to go through southern Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. The southern Indiana section is probably closest to being built.

The 1998 "TEA-21" and 2005 "SAFETEA-LU" laws expanded from the few dozen new "corridors" in the 1991 ISTEA law and the 2005 law has a total of 80 corridors. Some of these corridors involve upgrading existing highways, some involve construction on "new alignment," a couple of the corridor designations specify numerous road projects in a region.

The Federal Highway Administration page on the "corridors" is at

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/nhs/hipricorridors/index.html

There's a map showing the new "corridors."

Unfortunately, some people with unpleasant views on politics, racism and other topics have glommed onto the "NAFTA Superhighway" issue in recent years, which has caused some who do not share their particular philosophies to assume that there is nothing to the highway proposals since these advocates are wrong in other areas.

Here are some references for PRO-NAFTA Superhighways efforts:

http://www.ambassadorbridge.com/nafta_case.html
Ambassador Bridge - the NAFTA Superhighway Coalition (Canadian group)

http://www.nascocorridor.com
North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc.

http://www.fina-nafi.org/eng/integ/corridors.asp?langue=eng&menu=integ
The north americain trade corridors

Last but not least is the FHWA "Corridors of the Future" program - which is a corollary to the NAFTA Superhighway proposals. Some of the "corridors of the future" would include major expansions of east-west highways (especially near Chicago) that would interconnect the north south new / expanded superhighways.

http://www.fightgridlocknow.gov/

http://www.corridors.dot.gov/

The new I-69 NAFTA Superhighway is one of the selected "corridors" for national prioritization.

Upgrading I-5 between Canada and Mexico is also a "corridor of the future," although they don't like to use the term NAFTA Superhighway. In Washington State, a parallel effort has studied creating a "Washington Commerce Corridor" between Vancouver WA and Vancouver BC with car lanes, truck lanes, freight and passenger rail, and utilities (electric lines, water, oil, gas, etc). This is the same model as the Trans Texas Corridor proposals (a large network of new highways around Texas with separate facilities for cars, trucks, freight trains, passenger rail and utilities).

a pro-highway view about the formation of the original NAFTA Superhighway proposal:

http://aaroads.com/high-priority/corr18.html

excerpt:

the concept of Interstate 69 as a "NAFTA Highway" was conceived by Indiana officials who really wanted the Interstate 69 southwestern extension. To get federal funding, they planned a multi-state routing that would cut through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas on its way to Mexico. By marketing the whole "NAFTA Corridor" concept, officials and businessmen in Indiana were able to get federal money behind the project. Of course, money was also secured for the Indiana section.

and some opposition efforts against I-69

http://www.alltolled.com
Indiana's Experience with Tolling and Privatization

Indy Bypass Toll Road - the latest proposal without a need
Illiani Toll Road - will northern Indiana have any free roads left?
New Terrain I-69 - throwing a billion dollars out the window

[note: the Indy Bypass would be part of an Outer Beltway for Indianapolis, and the Illiani Toll Road would bypass Gary and other southwest suburbs of Chicago. It looks like it would connect to the future I-355 to complete an Outer Outer Beltway for Chicago.]

Indiana (and all the way to Texas and Mexico) I-69 - NAFTA Superhighway

http://www.carrI69.org

http://www.i69tour.org

http://www.commonsensei69.org

Maybe I am a Polly Anna, but I think we are heading into the most glorious period in the world's history. Almost every country gets what it takes to be prosperous (legal protection of property rights, low taxes, stable currency, solid and just legal system,) and billions will be moving out of poverty.

I think we will deal with then energy issue. Petroleum has been too cheap for alternatives to thrive. We are at that point where we will make changes and it will create jobs. I lookforward to being able to hop on an electric train to go to Las Vegas. I look forward to a plug in hybrid to get me to work. And I hope biofuels allows Africa to have its agricultural revolution.

And if we can make the switch to alternative transportation fuels, we will have enough affordable petroleum for jet and ship travel to be affordable to the masses.

At least that is the way I see it.

Google "PML Mini Cooper." It's a Mini-Cooper with a 160hp electric pancake motor on each wheel, giving a total of 640hp. It goes 0-60 in 4 seconds, tops out at 150mph, and using a 250cc motorcycle engine to recharge has a 940 mile range and gets 80 mpg. Talk about suicide machines!

Advances in PV just might allow you to generate enough juice during the day to do your commute using toned-down tech of this type in a Smart Car or a Toyota iQ.

How can this be? We have been promised more and more of everything forever! :-)

I also find it ironic that when people finally drive less, the first thing we hear about is that we won't have enough gas tax revenues to keep building more roads! It seems a lot of people have internalized the "more and more forever and ever" myth.

Utopia in Decay
http://home.comcast.net/~kevin.cherkauer/site/

Kevin Cherkauer

Some ready statistics for Colorado's tourism can be found here http://www.dot.state.co.us/Eisenhower/HolidayPdfs/TrafficCountsMemDay.pdf for Memorial Day and more so http://www.dot.state.co.us/Eisenhower/trafficcounts.asp#2008 for average monthly counts. Fairly steady decline so far for Q2 2008.

This is the one choke point between Denver and the mountains. Where I live it is rather wealthy and I was wondering if the traffic is dropping as much as rural poor areas. So far I don't think it has.

I wonder if this year we will still see the dual pickup truck towing a huge house fifth wheel and behind that the motorboat?