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Has the Industrialized World Reached Peak Travel?
Harperdog sends this excerpt from Miller-McCune:
"A study (abstract) of eight industrialized countries, including the United States, shows that seemingly inexorable trends — ever more people, more cars and more driving — came to a halt in the early years of the 21st century, well before the recent escalation in fuel prices. It could be a sign, researchers said, that the demand for travel and the demand for car ownership in those countries has reached a saturation point. 'With talk of "peak oil," why not the possibility of "peak travel" when a clear plateau has been reached?' asked co-author Lee Schipper ... Most of the eight countries in the study have experienced declines in miles traveled by car per capita in recent years. The US appears to have peaked at an annual 8,100 miles by car per capita, and Japan is holding steady at 2,500 miles."
We simply either cant spend the money, wont spend the money or cant/wont approve new infrastructure projects that will ease the traffic burden. One prime example was ripping down the West Side Highway in NYC (instead of fixing or replacing it), and then "wondering" why congestion increased when "suddenly" the drivers who used to use the WSH are now on surface streets or migrating to the FDR drive.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Said study authors should learn what a "peak" is and what peak oil means: after the "peak" there is a decline. So "scientists": come back if there is a steady, continous decline.
How(if at all) they are factoring in all the trucks delivering the stuff that I would historically have had to drive a car to the store to obtain...
A shift in the US from suburban material culture, where car transport is essentially necessary, and that necessity is self-perpetuating through the cultural and infrastructure spending priorities it creates, would be big news.
A shift from buying at bestbuy to buying at bestbuy.com might well drive down the number of car-hours/year; but would be fairly uninteresting. Ditto with things like Netflix and Amazon and pay-per-view cable movies and whatnot...
Ass exams over nail clippers certainly don't help
Table-ized A.I.
Is "peak" the new "-gate"?
A lot of work that used to require physical presence can now be done remotely. Not necessarily from home, but from computers at an office that doesn't have to be located at the site where the machine is. So offices move to where the people are rather than making people move to where the materials are. So you don't have to move groceries for those people as far either. Facetime, remote, telepresence will take over travel per capita as tech improves.
"Industrialised World" - The world is changing so quickly that the definitions of what is first world, third world, emerging markets, industrialised and so on are not clearly defined.
If that definition can be made accurately there can be concurrence as to if the peak travel levels have been reached or not.
Also, there has not in recorded history been any similar trends, except maybe for the peak and decline of rail travel - maybe a parallel can be drawn from that?
Given the above, the conclusion can only be "It looks like it, but we cannot be sure. Yet."
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Few people spend more than 1 and 2 hours a day traveling, unless their work itself is moving themselves or stuff around. So as speeds max out, so does travel.
Both car travel and air travel have slowed down. Even subsonic jets used to fly faster, but the fuel consumption goes up as Mach 1 is approached. Airport time is much longer than it used to be. Road capacity maxes out at 35MPH; faster, and the cars are spaced out more, so vehicles per minute drops. (California uses metering lights to try to keep freeways at 35MPH under heavy load. Japan just sets low speed limits on urban expressways.)
And, of course, we have such good communications that going somewhere merely to talk to someone is rarely necessary.
1. Improved communications, including the Internet has helped make some forms of travel less necessary.
2. Optimized analysis of usage patterns have allowed businesses to minimize travel costs better.
3. A general drastic shift in income towards the more wealthy at the cost of growth in other income levels has minimized the ability for most folks to have the opportunity for leisure travel (time as much as money).
Those create a trend - but there's no inherent "peak travel" there. Start electing folks who will tax wealth in order to give meaningful freedom to everyone else again (see: 1940's to 1970's US), and you will see more frequent travel again as people have resources to start businesses, engage in leisure activities, and do more than just go to WalMart every long once in a while, rather than a few rich having exponential increases.
Ryan Fenton
But a lack of dollars to power the miles. Pocketbook saturation? Either that our we ran out of road.
The authors should have compared miles driven to median income instead of GDP per capita. While GDP per capita has risen in the US, median income has not.
"Peak-gate"
The outrageous scandal of uh, something vague maybe, or nothing much really, we're not actually sure about it, and might have made it up completely... but it's coming to your TV screen tonight!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Ever since the time that gasoline hit $4 here in the US, I've been keeping an eye on the DOT's Traffic Volume Trends. It seems to me that, once Americans realized how much gas could cost (and will permanently cost, eventually), they also realized how much auto travel is superfluous. In particular This chart of the 12-month average for all roads shows a clear pullback in miles driven. Perhaps some of this could be attributable to people being more efficient in their travel; taking care of multiple errands at once, using public transportation much more, etc. Certainly the downturn in the economy has an impact, too.
"Japan is holding steady at 2,500 miles"
Actually, everyone in Japan drives zero miles. The average, however, is 4000 kilometers.
In the US and Canada for example, driving will peak based on how far you need to go to get things done. Two things have changed on that front, first being that things are closer. An example, 10 years ago if I wanted to go to a store like walmart I would have had to drive 30mins, it's 3minutes now. Same with a Canadian tire, but the size of my city has only grown by 5k people. The thing that really throws a wrench into this of course is if live out in the middle of nowhere Canada or US. In which case driving 2-4hrs twice a month to buy your groceries is still the norm, that's providing it's not dropped off by plane. Even having things dropped off by plane is getting scarce however, it's cheaper to do 5 months of deliveries by truck in the dead of winter for remote cities.
In most other places, notably japan unless you have the money to pay for private parking when you go to work you'll live the life of the 2hr rush, and be packed in, and leave your car at home. But everything you more than likely need is in walking or biking distance, and when it isn't you can get just about everything sent to your home. Sure that's happening in north america albeit at a slower pace. Japan can't dedicate space to roads, we can. Which leads japan to having more dedication to public transportation.
Personally to me it comes down to the whole space vs no space issue. We're not short on room in north america not even close. The only upper limit you have to that here, is the amount of space you can dedicate to roadways to ease conjestion.
Om, nomnomnom...
Growth, max out, decline.
That's why it's a peak, and it is what oil production does because oil is a finite resource.
What mechanism would there be behind the implied decline in travel?
Just saturation of the market won't cause a decline, it'll only cause a plateau - thus no peak.
I'd say yes. It seems like every person has their own vehicle, how much more could they want? If you look along the street, generally there are 2-3 cars parked for each house, many of them unused most of the time.
They reference miles traveled by car per capita. The US population grows by 2.5M people every year, which would lead me to believe the total miles driven is still increasing.
When I've seen peak oil discussed, usually they are talking about total oil output and not per capita consumption.
We travel to see stuff. Modern media has made much of that superfluous.
We travel to get stuff. Having stuff show up is less time wasted. Instead of going to buy tools, for example, I shop online and they show up. I can mix Ebay, Craigslist, and new vendors while I fap to pr0n and surf Slashdot.
We travel to see people. It's now more convenient to chat with a world of friends without bothering to meet in person very often.
We travel to learn stuff. Now information is at our fingertips.
Travel was a hassle before the TSA fondle-fest. Fuck travel.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Peak travel is an interesting concept but it applies only to a given technology level. My own situation is an example. I live in Texas and have family on both the East and West coast of the US. I would also like to vacation in Florida, Maine, and Northern California. But with 2 small children and the TSA increasingly repressive, I simply don't travel much beyond a one-day driving distance.
That would change instantly if fast, harassment-free transportation were available. That used to be the airlines, and it could be fast rail if it weren't for the fact that excessive govt regulation and problems getting right-of-way means that it will never happen. But we're one transportation revolution away from me making coast to coast travel plans fairly often, because that is where I would want to go if there were reasonable transportation options.
I can't be the only one who doesn't go anywhere beyond a 1-day drive anymore, either. If we're at a transportation peak, it is because of artificial suppression of travel due to airport harassment and because of other concerns that could be addressed by the availability of fast and easy transportation. Note that I don't mention cost - I'd be willing to pay quite a bit for quick and hassle free transportation around the country, but it simply can't be done right now.
As a nation, we're quickly heading towards loserville when we can't even manage to use available technology to let people travel freely without harassment. Car, train, and aircraft technology are all available to allow for reasonably rapid transportation, but our car speed limits are where they were 30 years ago, there is still very limited train service in most central and western states, and the govt is doing its best to harass people out of flying commercial air. We suck, and we're doing it to ourselves.
A study of eight horse-using countries, including the United States, shows that seemingly inexorable trends — ever more people, more horses, and more riding — came to a halt in the early years of the 20th century, well before the recent escalation in fodder prices. It could be a sign, researchers said, that the demand for travel and the demand for horse ownership in those countries has reached a saturation point. 'With talk of "peak manure," why not the possibility of "peak travel" when a clear plateau has been reached?' asked co-author Jebediah Schipper ... Most of the eight countries in the study have experienced declines in miles traveled by horse per capita in recent years. The US appears to have peaked at an annual 1620 miles by horse per capita, and Japan is holding steady at 500 miles."
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Interesting that travel dropped right about the time we really geared up the subsidized food burning.
Funny how historically high food prices and pitiful job and income growth can really dampen a decade. That's without mentioning gas prices. "Peak Travel" you say?? Whoever came up with this Peak Travel idea must live in vacuum.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
I travel way less then I used to. I can do a lot of what I used to have to travel for from home. "The commute" is also a mysterious phenomena that the US, who will collectively bitch at having to walk thirty seconds to a minute more because there wasn't a closer parking space, somehow put up with putting up with being in the hour range. It may be that it's starting to dawn on people that you know what, 1/8-1/16th of my waking time isn't worth a 10-20% pay raise. People may be starting to weigh their options and realizing having a 30" TV instead of a 50" one may not be such a bad deal if it comes with a side order of actually having enough time to watch it.
"Peak Oil", is a worthless flawed concept to begin with. Gauging how much oil exists based on how much we CHOOSE to pump isn't even starting to take reality into consideration. If there were no huge multinational interests trying to control gas prices, "Peak Oil" would be flawed to the point of being worthless. The fact that there ARE huge multinational interests involved in oil price manipulation means that "Peak Oil" is just a stupid idea.
"Peak travel" on the other hand could have some validity. Depending on what they are measuring for "Peak". If they are measuring it in time spent travelling. Obviously there is a hard limit on the number of hours that can be traveled. Just count the number of people on the planet, and multiply by 24 hours.
In China, though, travel is going way up. Their National Trunk Highway System, very similar in road design to the US Interstate system, is up to 74,000 km and adding about 10,000 km per year, all built since 1988. That may do for China what the Interstate system did for the US - pull the country much closer together. China has historically had weak inter-provincial links and restrictions on inter-provincial trade. There are still trade barriers between provinces. Most provinces have their own auto manufacturers, protected by inter-provincial import duties. That probably won't last out this decade.
I think at least in the United States, we've also hit the maximum commute times people are willing to tolerate. For a long time "drive till you qualify" (i.e. "drive outward from the city until you find a house you can afford") was the motto of the real estate industry. People found out how much the quality of life suffered when they were spending two hours in each direction behind the wheel of a car. They're now willing to make sacrifices in other areas (less living space, smaller yard, schools not as good) for more reasonable commute times.
I've been looking for a house to buy recently and there's a maximum commute time I'm willing to tolerate. Beyond that, I'll keep renting, thank you.
Many of the people who bought houses in far-flung exurbs "because it's where I can afford to buy" were also stretched pretty thin financially to afford those houses. The recent recession, with its layoffs and real estate bust, was not kind to those people. Many of them are not commuting long distances to work because they simply don't have a job anymore. Or they've lost their home and have moved back into a rental closer to the city.
I know one of the perhaps 20 industrialized countries in the Worl has an obsession with cars; but less cars means less travel? I say non sequitur. Ever heard of trains and planes?
Also, the 8k miles/car/capita in USA vs 2k in Japan is meaningless: in Japan you never need to travel very far because it is smaller and has a higher density.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
The increasing number of people who work from home must have some bearing here (altho it could be negligible at this point). I expect in the next few decades this will have a substantial negative impact on the value of office space as well as reduce traffic. Where I work, there's actually no necessity for anyone to physically be present - it could all be done remotely, but I think the hold up is the shift in people's thinking this requires more so than any technological hurdle - there's the social aspect and the "get out of the house" aspect and the "I can't be around my spouse and kids _all_ the time!" aspect and just plain old inertia. In the meantime, our 500+ people keep congregating in large downtown buildings unnecessarily, for which we pay better than $250K/mo, and our front-line people conduct 99% of their business via email and phone.
For those who want to read the article before discussing it:
http://www.civil.ist.utl.pt/wctr12_lisboa/WCTR_General/documents/02455.pdf
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
It's not that we stopped buying when the recession hit us, the recession hit us because we could not spend anymore. We're broke, people!
Cars ain't free, and no matter how much you want one, if you can't afford one you can't buy one. For the longest time we have been bleeding the middle class dry, both, tax-wise and economy-wise.
The biggest tax burden has been carried by the middle class. It's easy to see why. You can't squeeze blood from a stone and you can't squeeze tax from someone who has nothing to start with. So there's no tax to cash in from the lowest income bracket. Quite the opposite, you'll probably spend on them for social security. And with the tax breaks for the super rich getting more and more inane and them being well able to stash their money away in foundations and other tax friendly money parking places, and them not being more than a thin lining on the top of the crowd, they were not the ones to fill the state's pockets either.
Governments need money, though, and SOMEONE had to foot the bill.
Additionally, the real incomes (after inflation) are going down. Essentially, we're pushing the middle class down, opening the gap between rich and poor.
And, well, how many cars do those few that can still buy them need?
An economy is healthy if people have the money to spend it. If I have 100 bucks and you do too, we both can go and buy a DVD player. If I have 200 and you have none, I will buy a DVD player. But I won't buy two, and you can't afford it.
I currently have no car. I see no need to get a car. My residence is within cheap taxi fare to the airport of a state capital. If I need a car for something, I can walk across the street and pilfer my business partner's ride. Not owning a car has no impact on my desire to travel or the amount that I travel. It simply means I'm not blowing several hundred a month on a car payment, insurance, accompanying fees, maintenance, gas, et cetera.
Furthermore, 'ride sharing' is catching on in larger cities, and I expect that to expand as time goes on.
I'd read TFA, but I can't, as it isn't loading. So I may be off base here, but my take is: The only 'peak' having been reached, perhaps, is vehicle *ownership*. Travel is still alive and kicking.
The moderator's silly is correct. Give us flying cars, and the demand for travel will increase. Travel distance, at least, not necessarily time nor energy use.
I read this article and what came to my mind was that we are awaiting the next advance in the medium that we use to travel. Back in the early 1900's with the worlds first automobiles, there was a quote from someone(cant remember at all who) that went "humans will never be able to travel in these things faster than ~35 mph because we wont be able to breath." He was talking about how hard it was to breath with all that wind in your face. Then the windshield was invented. I think today, we are just waiting for our next "windshield" to come along and get us over whatever hump we are facing with the speed of our travels.
Brand me a troll again, but
Geez guys, start asking 'What is the Purpose of the Article?'
Neologisms are always a warning.
As Mulder says 'Trust No One'.
There may be another reason: we don't have any more money or time to spend on travel than we are already spending. This is not "peak demand", because we may still want to travel more (demand still present) but simply cannot.
The leveling has little to do with money or infrastructure and everything to do with the composition of the population.
The per-capita mileage has leveled because we have a lower percentage of people in the younger, more mobile age groups. The baby boomers are reaching an age where they stay home more than in the past. The less-populous generations behind them are still working, traveling, driving as much as ever... there are just LESS of them as a PERCENTAGE of the population.
Peak oil being reached does not mean that there is a peak demand of energy. We will always need more energy, from oil or other resources, and , we will never seize to stop having the need to travel, faster and further.
Hence, NO, we did not reach "peak travel", we just reached "peak car sales".
The lunatic is in my head
For the ultimate in high-density living, try an Arcology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology
how come the population of most European countries cannot sustain itself? It is actually diminishing in Germany, which is the gold standard for all kinds of regulation and optimization in civil engineering, and, incidentally, has residence ownership rates in 40%s compared to US 70%s.
If people don't feel like or cannot afford having kids in the "efficiently designed" cities, perhaps something is wrong with the reigning notions of urban efficiency?
Why bother traveling? We have the internet, books, video, etc. Travel is a waste of time, energy and other resources. I can explore things better through other means, enjoy it more and be back in time for tea.
"And people still like to buy big, heavy cars that can accelerate to 60 mph in less than four seconds."
Sure, I'd like a 911 Turbo or a 458 Italia, but the roads are not exactly teeming with them.
It is the point on the graph of oil production over time where it stops rising and goes sharply into decline.
We had one in 2008 due to economic factors.
We may have another some time due to problems with scarcity.
With respect, these arguments above all miss the point that not just one system (i.e. my car, my house, my transportation situation) will be affected by a peak-oil rise in energy prices. Rather, all systems will be affected and they will cascade into an entropy of economic breakdown. It will, of course, happen at different rates for different people. But the economic dislocations caused by $150/$200 a barrel oil will filter through the entire economy making it impossible to sustain a 50-mile-a-day commute to an $65,000 a year job. At a sustained level of $150 a barrel oil, it will take about ten years to knock out the upper-middle class technological -based economy that most Slashdaughters either live in or aspire to. But it will happen much sooner for most everyone else.
I don't think that peak travel is currently driven by the price of oil but rather by the means of alternatives to travel. Only in recent years has video conferencing and mobile communications become ubiquitous. While a face-to-face meeting is still far better this has to be offset against the cost in money and time of travel to and from the meeting plus the currently less than pleasant experience of flying.
Even as little as 10 years ago video conferencing was still relatively novel and not particularly trivial and so travel to meetings was required. Now that communication has become a lot simpler there is an alternative to travel in many cases so is it surprising that the amount of travel has levelled off? As communication technology improves, and airport security moves towards requiring a full body cavity search, I would imagine that it will continue to reduce the volume of travel required.
> Even subsonic jets used to fly faster,
The airlines started doing that what in the last decade prior to the fee-bonanza-mania they have discovered to reach profitability. Oh! I remember, it was during 2005, 2006 during the President G.W. Bush historic $2+, $3+, $4+ per gallon of gasoline rise. They noticed that flying around free food cost lots of money, as did bottled water, blankets, and lots of overhead carry-on luggage. Charge for that shit, my son and ye shall prosper, they said. =) Lower flying speed vs increased travel time was the bargain they struck.
> but the fuel consumption goes up as Mach 1 is approached
Yeah, but what commercial airliner wants to go near Mach 1? The Concorde was a dodo bird walking since its 1950s birth and tech. And if anything transonic civilian is where it'd be at. And what does it matter. Supersonic is the realm of military flying, and supersonic varies by altitude, and military jets reach stratospheric heights that commercial jets can not reach. It's all so moot.
Supercruise, now when is that going to come form military application to civilian use?
Isn't it a bit misleading to say that Assen has a density of 2000 per square mile ? That's measured over 32 square miles. But if you look at a map, you will see that most of the population lives in an area of 2.5 miles by 3.5 miles. And my guess is that that area is quite flat, making it ideal for cycling.
* About three billion people do not have the ability to travel farther than 20 or 50 km more than a few times in their lives. Have you been to _rural_ India, Turkey, etc? I have.
* As new, cheaper & more efficient transportation emerges, more people will travel more.
* In a financial crisis, both leisure and business travel takes a dip. This is obvious.
* As people work fewer physical jobs, they have the time, ability and hopefully money to travel if they want.
* People traveling to/from the USA will naturally travel less as the security theater is becoming too much of a burden. I have been on all continents except Southern America. Never, not even at the most corrupt backwater guard outpost in the middle of nowhere, have I been treated as badly as in the tourist magnets of the USA.
Horses don't actually eat manure.
I think you are right, but this is also mentioned in the discussion of the graph -- there's a two-mile unpopulated donut around the town, it looks like to me. Note, also, that the town noted on the graph with most similar density -- Lexington -- includes two family farms, some serious highway right-of-way, and several office parks. We play that trick, too.
And that density pattern cuts both ways -- if your destination is not in town, then the minimum distance is 2 miles, because you've got to cross the donut. My understanding is that kids (11 and older) from surrounding villages ride in to school in Assen, and it's 5 miles.
For me, the more telling comparison, that I discovered after writing that post, is Groningen, versus Cambridge-Somerville-neighboring. Similar weather, similar student populations, relatively flat, greater density here, yet they have the 57% ride share.
GPM as in Gallons per Month, that is. Attaching a media-friendly buzzlabel to it is unnecessary.
I drive a powerful car with a large-displacement V6. On average, I get about 17MPG and this fact is shown in bright orange letters on my dashboard computer. A friend commented on my this horrible mileage, and he's right, on the surface. Fact is, I drive about ten miles a day on average and live 2 miles from where I work. He drives fifty miles round trip just for work. This is in a car that averages 25MPG (GM 3800 V6). When I used to do that kind of driving, I averaged 28MPG (GM 3800 SeriesII V6, newer engine).
Our cars weigh about the same and it's generally the weight of the vehicle that determines city gas mileage.
Each day, we burn:
Him: 50mi @ 25MPG = 2 gallons of fuel (I'm sure the drive for work is the largest part of his travels)
Me: 10mi @ 17MPG = 2.35 quarts of fuel (I count my total since work is just 4 miles of it)
Granted, my wife still drives fifty miles a day at 25MPG, but we're working on that. With the economy improving and jobs opening up, that commute will be reduced as well.
The future is going to require shorter commutes, which is going to require people to live closer to where they work. While that will surely cause problems in large cities back East, the Western states like Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado have a lot of dead space between cities and that's going to become some very important real estate.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
We are at the threshold of true tele-presence, and the need or even desire for physical presence may soon be relegated to the dust bins of history. There are fewer and fewer places one "Has" to be, which means that one is left with places to be by choice. That suggests working from home a lot (and we need to begin to teach our children the need for self discipline, and the likely remote visibility that employers will demand.) For a little while, the haves will be able to game the system with cheap third world labor, but in the end a global ,flat playing field will allow an engineer in California, the opportunity to make a serious contribution to a project in Mumbai, just as easily as a doctor in Singapore, can perform a robotic surgery on a patient in South Africa.
As traffic gets increasingly congested and becomes more
stop and go the seat time is the real limit.
Urban sprawl is ultimately by commute time not miles.
More apropos today is the massive drag provided
by the lack of liquidity in the housing market. Since
many home owners would be unable to qualify for
their existing loan they are unable to swap their current
location for one closer to home. Jobs and labor
pools including technical talent will need to be local.
Manufacturing will be clobbered as the number and income level of
many manufacturing jobs cannot justify a company getting
involved and relocating talent. That will be executives only...
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Maybe we won't have another and it may be the peak for all time. We've got the two factors of increasing difficulty (thus expense) of sustaining such high levels of oil production and demand that has decreased. I don't have a crystal ball and neither do the oil industry journals (others in my workplace read them).
Some people highjack the term peak oil as the nightmare cross-over point of very sharply increasing demand combined with very sharply decreasing production. It's a lot simpler than that. It's just the point of maximum oil production and we may have already seen it. It's getting a lot harder to find the stuff and a lot harder to get it out of the ground.
It's getting a lot harder to find the stuff and a lot harder to get it out of the ground.
Maybe we'll find nifty new ways to get it out of the ground, maybe we'll find nifty new ways to make it. My issue is more with peak sustainable oceanic acidification :p
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
With respect "nifty new ways to make it" ignores the problem and is talking about a different one. Oil is cheap because we drill holes and the stuff comes up without much effort. Once other sources are mentioned (eg. oil from coal etc) it's not peak oil anymore and getting into a far more complex argument. Peak energy production is a very different thing to peak oil.