Traffic costs the people of America about $1.7 trillion each year. Millions of jobs will be created to convert these costs into value and customer savings:
- $425 billion per year for foreign oil (link).
- $871 billion per year for accidents (link).
- 40,100 road-deaths in 2017.
- 2.31 million injuries in 2013.
- $305 billion per year for congestion (link).
- $109 billion/year, car damage, bad roads (link).
Radically safer and more efficient transportation is very well understood:
- Freight railroads average 476 ton-miles per gallon (link).
- The Personal Rapid Transit (PRT or podcar) network in Morgantown has delivered 110 million oil-free, injury-free passenger-miles since being built as a solution to the 1973 Oil Embargo in 1975. In that same period of zero injuries, 1.7 million Americans died on the government highway monopoly. Highway accidents are not accidents. Who they happen to is random, that they happen is a design feature of the highway network.
In 1910 Thomas Edison noted it was practical to have all the electrical energy we need provided by sunshine:
“Sunshine is spread out thin and so is electricity. Perhaps they are the same, Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy….. Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property…. There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen….”