Sustainable Transportation in the United States Part 1

I have finished my independent study. I am going to post it bit-by-bit here on gimme-five for everyone to read. Thank you, everyone, for the input you’ve given me over the past few months. I appreciate it, and I hope you enjoy reading my study.

Note: If you’d like to keep track of whenever I post a new article about this paper, check out the sustransitpaper category.

Introduction

The current state of transportation in the United States is both a blessing and a curse. An increasingly mobile society is convenient and leads to economic development. However, the current transportation system also creates significant social costs, such as congestion, accidents, noise, pollution, and resource depletion.[1]

These social costs are severe, and they are not entirely borne by their creators. For example, a car driver bears significant costs when involved in an accident or stuck on a congested freeway. However, the same individual does not pay for the environmental impact of oil extraction when filling up at a gas station, or the increased congestion created by driving to work instead of taking the subway.

Because some costs of transportation are not charged directly to the transportation user, an inefficiently high amount of transportation is consumed. This over consumption negatively impacts both society today and future generations. Therefore, current consumption of transportation in the United States is a market failure.

There are three key problems created by the over consumption of transportation. The first is that Earth’s liquid fuels stores are being depleted rapidly. Due to excessive consumption of gasoline, oil continues to become more expensive. Furthermore, no equivalent, affordable, practical fuel has emerged to take the place of gasoline. If this problem is not corrected before the supply of oil becomes too scarce, the world economy could be strangled. The second problem is that pollution created by transportation is damaging the environment and accelerating the rate of climate change. Finally, the over consumption of transportation is creating congestion problems that are puzzling transportation planners worldwide.

This paper begins by reviewing transportation’s history, problems, and potential solutions to those problems. Then, specific policies are offered that could mitigate these problems while maintaining the benefits of mobility. The policies aim to avoid immediate and extreme costs, or disproportionate effects on the poor.

Enacting these policies will not be easy. They are a serious departure from the status quo, and will probably be met with political resistance. Still, if nothing is done to remedy these transportation problems, the costs could be catastrophic. Thus, hopefully the ideas contained within this paper will be seriously considered by policymakers.

[1] William Black and Peter Nijkamp, Social Change and Sustainable Transport (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). 3.