How to Fix Our Interstates... Hint: Not with more asphalt.

[hunter]

14. When I got my driver's license about forty years ago...

... I was expecting the automobile culture would be dead by now.

I've never liked automobiles, especially the gasoline or diesel sort. They are stinky noisy expensive things that kill and maim people.

Nevertheless, when I was younger I did more than my fair share of driving.

My wife and I were Los Angeles commuters when we met, but we've avoided that lifestyle, most especially once we had children, who are all now 21+ adults. When our kids were infants and toddlers we were able to manage our work schedules so one of us was always home. We never did daycare. I'd also take our babies to my wife's work so they could nurse.

One of our kids now commutes (in a Prius...), an adaption to California's impossible Bay Area housing costs, where wages seem high until you look at the rents.

I drive a mid-eighties $800 car with a salvage title. I also have the mechanical skills to keep it going, barring any major engine failure. I have less than zero interest in cars. If someone gave me a new car, no matter how wonderful, I'd give it away as fast as I could.

Personally I don't care if the Interstate Highway system rots.

In my Utopia the maximum speed limit for anything but emergency vehicles is 35 miles per hour, including airplanes. Passengers and freight are moved long distances by ambling electric trains, and vacations are long enough to enjoy the ride.

Everyone is in too much of a hurry, and for what? We're all racing along the highway to hell, faster, faster, faster...

What our economists call "productivity" is a direct measure of the damage we are doing to the earth's natural environment and our own human spirit.