Adventures in Pavement

[pscot]

is back on the front page of my daily fish wrap. The state won't issue bonds for 520 unless the financing is nailed down. This means tolls, levied in advance, on the I-90 bridge as well as the bridge to the future. I've lost track of how many brazillions of dollars are going to be spent on the viaduct/tunnel, the I-405 corridor and 520 overthe next decade or so.

All this strikes me as an act of folly the like of which we have not seen since Whoops was supposed to save us from freezing in the dark. The City of Seattle pulled the plug on that debacle, but no-one seems willing to call bullshit on this latest eruption of concrete. People who understand the oil business are saying that peak oil has arrived. Production from Mexico's giant Cantarell oil field fell by 20% last year. If that trend continues, within 3 years our gulf coast refineries are likely to run dry. Oil from the North Slope is a dwindling fraction of what it was 10 years ago. Saudi oil production is down 8% year to year. The Russians appear to be embargoing their oil to prolong the life of their reserves.

Meanwhile, the Chinese plan to build 80,000 kilometers of freeways, a system larger than our own, in the next 20 years. They are also inviting car makers from around the world to set up production lines in China. The French, on the other hand, just tested a bullet train that hit speeds of 350 mph. Amtrak takes a day and a half to go from Seattle to Sacramento and typically runs 3 to 6 hours late.

My point is this: I think we're making a huge mistake. We should be building mass transit as though our lives depended on it, because they do.