Just kidding with that title for this blog entry.
Let's just agree that there are fundamental sea changes taking place during this recession that reflect a basic transformation in the way we live and work, one of them being that we are becoming conditioned to driving less. (Will we need all those additional lanes that the CHSRA keeps threatening us with?)
And no, it's not that we are taking more public transit. The level of transit use, nationally, remains trivial vis-a-vis that of any other major industrial nation. A fraction of a percent of increase within a fraction remains a fraction. And, the increases are mostly within the population centers that have adequate public mass transit. Our inter-state transit use, by rail, remains no larger than a rounding error.
It's not only that there is such vast unemployment and that people without jobs will not be commuting. It's that so many jobs have disappeared -- permanently. We previously noted that where a particular factory employed 10,000 workers, they are now, thanks to technologies, able to be as or more productive with several hundred highly skilled workers. That's due in no small measure to digital information technologies.
The job down-sizing is also due to the increased productivity from automation driving the declining need for human labor. There's a TV Show, "How Things Are Made" that will give you a better picture about how we go about making most things now-a-days.
The point is, that certainly by the time the California high-speed train will be up and running (2033), it will be even less necessary than it is right now. As business travel declines, inter-city rail will become a vestigial transit modality we don't need. We would do the smart thing if we just kept what we have in good running condition, fixing it, upgrading it. But major expansion is the last thing we should be doing now or in the near future.
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Driving Drops Again, but What’s the Big Picture?
•Adie Tomer
•December 12, 2011 | 10:09 am
USA-commerce;?