There's a remarkable graph that has starred in blog posts and news stories with some regularity over the past year. It shows vehicle miles traveled in America over the last quarter century or so. For most of the period, the line rockets upward, straight and true, preparing to blast off the page. But then the strangest thing happens. In 2004, it starts to level off. And in 2008, it begins to decline.
The tale behind that line grows in significance by the day. That rocket-ride upward corresponds fairly directly to the economic story that has culminated in the current crisis. Americans moved outward from cities in droves in the 1980s and 1990s, buoyed by cheap oil prices. Commute times soared as metropolitan areas stretched into the distant exurbs, many of which now lay devastated by housing defaults and foreclosures. As demand for oil increased, so too did prices, which led to a stream of money flowing into the Persian Gulf. Gulf nations recycled it back to us by buying American debt, thereby facilitating the massive borrowing that fueled the housing bubble.
In the end, high oil prices also helped to pop that bubble. The squeeze expensive gas placed on household budgets helped push marginal homeowners over the edge, fueling the credit conflagration, before finally exhausting the American consumer and tipping us into recession. And an epic recession it will be -- large enough to sink oil prices and the international financial system that sustained American debt-supported consumption.
The line also embodies a significant change in the mindset of the American commuter. As vehicle miles traveled have fallen, transit ridership has exploded. We learned this week that rider numbers in the third quarter were 6.5 percent above their level a year ago (which was itself a record-setting year). Even as gasoline prices have crashed amid global recession, the gains have proven durable -- preliminary October figures show steady, high transit use. For a nation that moved relentlessly away from center cities and transit for a half a century, and spent trillions of dollars making it nearly impossible to get around without an automobile, the turning of the tide is momentous.
So, too, is the political shift. Just last week, the Federal Transit Administration approved the construction of the Silver Line, a new Northern Virginia addition to Washington's Metrorail system -- and one that the FTA nearly killed a year ago. Describing the decision, Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) said, "[T]he ideologues in the administration have given up." And no wonder, after the electoral drubbing Republicans received in November.
Now President-elect Barack Obama, seeking to lift the economy from its doldrums, is promising the largest public-works spending push since Dwight Eisenhower's interstate highway system. Nervous greens have focused on Obama's promise to repair the nation's crumbling roads and bridges, but this is misguided. The incoming administration has asked local governments to deliver a list of ready-to-go transit projects for inclusion in the stimulus package, which has already turned up an estimated $12 billion in items that can be kicked off within 90 days, with a further $20 billion available inside of two years. And the Center for American Progress, not quite the official policy house of the Obama administration but close (its head, John Podesta, is running the Obama transition) has released its proposed stimulus package, which includes road spending equal to half the average annual amount allotted to highways and transit spending twice the annual amount normally bestowed.
We are beset by political, economic, and social realities that were outside the realm of the possible just a few years ago. For decades, we thought that building one way was the route to prosperity. We were wrong, as it turns out -- dramatically so. Remarkably, we seem to have learned our lesson. No longer can our geography and our economy be described by a single, unsustainable, upward-sloping line.
Cash for Clunkers brought us ... more clunkers!
One year after his election, Obama on verge of audaciously fulfilling his promise as the green FDR
Comments
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JMG Posted 4:54 am
11 Dec 2008
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:11 am
11 Dec 2008
This kind of stimulus would be consistent with Obama's campaign, which was all about bringing Americans together in new ways. It would help maintain the social capital that's about to be decimated by the economic downturn.
I've seen this described as "infilling", trying to make a town, or in some case, reconstitute a town, from a suburb. Maybe that will gather some steam. The only real estate that is maintaining its value or even rising is near transit, which I would think might take a few years for developers to quite understand, but then maybe they'll turn their full focus to it (of course, Brooks can't bring himself to call for a full-blown town square with markets, post offices, etc., but since he made his reputation writing about exurbia, I'm still amazed).
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JMG Posted 5:36 am
11 Dec 2008
Hate to break it to him (since it will be lost on him) but the biggest problems in the burbs is going to be dealing with all the gigantic empty big boxes. The sprawlplex is costly to serve because of the many square miles devoted to the major American Idol called "Free Parking." Now Mr. Burb wants to take even MORE money from the cities (still reeling from the disinvestment and destruction of the interstates) and give it to the burbians. What a moron.
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:53 am
11 Dec 2008
In other words, the conservatives have themselves in a bit of an ideological pickle. On the one hand, as I've tried to argue, the Republican party has thrived on the lack of community that sprawl engenders, because it makes it more difficult to organize people into parties or unions. On the other hand, conservatism, as generally understood, is supposed to value community.
However, there is also a progressive view of community that has been floating around for years, which Gar Alperovitz discusses in his book "America after capitalism", and which David Morris has done quite a bit to advocate (although Alperovitz doesn't discuss suburbia either, so there's probably a tension on the progressive side when it comes to suburbia and community as well).
As long as the only conservative alternative to anything is privatization and anti-government in the charter school and more-for-defense mode, they'll continue to become more and more irrelevant to national (and local) politics.
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hapa Posted 6:35 am
11 Dec 2008
if you adjust that total miles traveled curve for population, without adding in the spike in undocumented population, you get a drop in person-miles starting in 2005 or even 2004, close to when gas prices started rising. if you then look at something like krugman's recent employment chart post and then think about underemployment and hours available and stuff, you see that probably along with corporate route-consolidation and stuff, there were a lot of people who were vulnerable to gas prices, and they were likely doing some mild conservation already; when the housing bubble burst and commodities went nuts (in response), it exacerbated an existing problem and moved it into the nielsen family homes, where it got noticed.
i wish somebody would do a more thorough study of this. it behooves greenish people to better understand what happened to the lowest three quintiles in the bush years (and before) in order to set an ecological course that serves all.
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:52 am
11 Dec 2008
Again, this would benefit exactly the bottom three quintiles, really, the bottom 80-something percent, who won't be able to afford long-distance travel in the not too distance future (see I didn't ignore you, don't get paranoid!).
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JMG Posted 6:56 am
11 Dec 2008
Several people have made the same point about overall oil consumption --- that it peaked years ago on a per-person basis.
It's an excellent observation and worth noting whenever it occurs. Like all measurements of access to goodies under our "free market" system, we like to ignore distribution because it highlights how broken our systems really are -- such as the "world's best health care system" that isn't (a) the world's best; (b) concerned with health; or (c) a system, what with 45-50 million entirely excluded from it.
By failing to note the peak in VMT/person, we probably missed a key inflection point.
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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Biodiversivist Posted 7:08 am
11 Dec 2008
in 1030 we found 10bbls of new oil and used 1.5bbls.
in 1964 we found 48bbls of new oil and used 12bbls.
in 1988 we found 23bbls of new oil and used 23bbls.
in 2005 we found 5.5bbls of new oil and used 30bbls.
Charles Weeden of Maxwell & Co.
a top US Oil analyst.
I ripped this off from another comment I saw somewhere and have not tried to verify its accuracy, but this is in general how peak oil works.
People who are buying low mpg cars at this point are going to be kicking themselves in the not to distant future.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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spaceshaper Posted 11:09 am
11 Dec 2008
just guessing.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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