Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

An anonymous reader writes: During a recent Urban Land Institute talk, the director of the Iowa Department of Transportation, Paul Trombino, told an audience that the road network in Iowa was probably going to "shrink." Calling for fewer highways isn't what you'd normally expect from a government transportation official, but since per capita driving has peaked in the U.S., it might make sense for states to question whether or not to spend their transportation budgets on new roads.

Comments

Re:the real admission is peak driving.

[Ol Olsoc]

According to TFA 'peak driving' happened in 2004. more than a decade later states are waking up to empty highways. I think this is happening for a few reasons:

intractable recession:

The US, in general, is a declining superpower and its starting to show.

Driving sucks:

Apparently Millenials are way ahead on one thing though. It used to take people 6o years or more to get that bitter.