Highway exodus: 10 million Americans ditch their car by 2012
Remember the music video for REM's Everybody Hurts, where hundreds of people simultaneously ditch their car on the freeway? Well, according to Jeff Rubin, a Canadian commodities analyst, that's kinda how US highways will look when gas hits $7 a gallon -- and that could happen as soon as 2010. By 2012, Rubin predicts that there will be as many as 10 million fewer cars on the road here in the most car-obsessed country in the world. As gas shifts up towards $7 -- what Europeans are used to paying -- most lower-income Americans will begin to commute more as Europeans do. That means anyone who has access to public transportation will actually use it. For most urban areas in the US, that would be revolutionary in itself. Suburbs in many areas are already struggling to find residents as the housing slump and high gas prices push would-be buyers closer to the city. It's not clear at this point when, or if, that trend will reverse.
[via Earth2Tech]
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