Why we need car free TOD now

We need to bailed out of the fossil fuel economy.

Yesterday the government had to bail out AIG because it was "too big to fail." Today three banks, JP Morgan, Citicorp, and Bank of America have reached the size of being too big to fail because of mergers engineered by the Federal Government. What moral bind are we in down the road for irresponsible actions from these Goliaths?

Rising gas prices forced consumers to confront the hole they had dug for themselves by greedily consuming the toxic products put out by rising bank stars on Wall Street on the fringes of the commute beltway in Tracy and Merced and Modesto and Stockton. The average commuters costs have gone up 25% because of rising gas and related food prices (from $2500 to $3000,) and upto 50% of homes are in or will be in foreclosure. Meanwhile the government was quietly funding its illegal war, in Iraq for Halliburton and Exxon's benefit, on the basis of consumer borrowing from the home equity.

Despite owning Iraq, gas prices have and will continue to rise because of peaking supply and increasing demand. Another 25% increase seems reasonable in the next eight years making the housing problem worse. Simultaneously, foreclosures will continue to put downward pressure on homes values by increasing the supply of depressed inventory. The next government will need to provide another bailout. The pattern of home value collapse on the fringe of the commuting suburbs outside the urban job centers in San Francisco and Silicon Valley needs to be addressed. A bailout needs to remove incentives for Americans to live far from where they work. Policies to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled will solve the problem of rising gas and falling home prices with locational choice. Carfree Transit Oriented Development is a logical bailout policy initiative if we want to escape the fate of the post soviet empire.