Planet Broadband

Chapter 6. Planet Broadband

WE ARE LITERALLY DRIVING ourselves crazy. The typical rush-hour commute in a major U.S. metropolis has become a maddening, frustrating crush of cars, fueled by oil pulled from the earth, and consumed at a mind-boggling rate of 3.5 billion gallons a day. Although the U.S. population grew by 20 percent from 1982 to 1997, the time spent by U.S. motorists navigating traffic climbed 235 percent, according to a report produced by the Texas Transportation Institute, which monitors U.S. traffic congestion. Traffic costs the United States $78 billion annually, representing 4.5 billion hours of wasted time and nearly 7 billion gallons of fuel wasted while drivers sit in traffic. What used to be termed rush hour has in fact doubled ...