Sam Smith - This summer more people have told me of traffic jams than I can recall hearing in a such a short period. A non rush hour disaster in Danbury, a complaining UPS guy, all 15,000 parking spaces occupied in our outlet filled Maine town, and friends an hour late for lunch after what was meant to be a one and a half hour trip.
It may seem baffling and frustrating but there's really nothing surprising about it at all - except that we don’t talk about it and the media doesn’t report on it.
It’s another manifestation of population growth and our inability to keep up with it.
The federal highway system was launched in 1956. By 1980 about 85% of it was completed. But since then our population has increased by some 80 million.
What about trains, buses, and planes?
That’s something else we don’t talk about, but here are some stats:
In 2012, passenger air miles were only 14% of passenger highway miles.
Bus passenger miles are 1% of highway passenger miles.
And despite Amtrak and all the talk about high speed rail, rail passenger miles are less than half what they were when the federal highway system was launched.
This is the sort of thing that happens all the time in politics and the media. We obsess on whatever is the favored issue of the moment and ignore the ones that really change our lives.
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