Orphan Road

Thinking about the two posts I did last night, linking to the New York Times and the Financial Times, it occurs to me that we may have actually turned the corner in this country with respect to land use and transportation planning.

I've been ranting for a while now about the connection between land use patterns and energy consumption, but for a whle it seemed like shouting into the wind, especially as national politicians talked about how some magic pill like ethanol was going to solve all our problems. Lately, though, it seems like the connection between land use, public transit, energy consumption and national security is finally starting to gel in people's minds.

It's going to take a generation or more to slowly re-shape our cities to accommodate a world of expensive oil and gas, of course. And even in 2008 highway funding dwarfs transit funding. But I can't help but get the sense that, after the ethanol miracle failed to deliver, people are finally getting serious about the idea that we need to approach the end of cheap oil with a holistic effort to change the way live and move on the planet.