High Gas Prices Breathe New Life into DC's TOD

"Since the end of World War II, government policy has funded and encouraged the suburban lifestyle, subsidizing highways while starving mass transit and keeping gas taxes much lower than in some other countries...But there's been a radical shift in recent months. Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer highway miles in May than a year earlier. In the Washington area and elsewhere, mass transit ridership is setting records. Last year, transit trips nationwide topped 10.3 billion, a 50-year high."

Some experts do not expect a major reshuffling of the American urban order, but it is clear that Americans have begun to reorganize their priorities around the expectation of continued high fuel costs. This means choosing more fuel-efficient cars, looking for ways to reduce vehicle miles traveled, and moving into more dense neighborhoods closer to urban cores. While much of the evidence is still anecdotal, many Americans have clearly begun to re-examine their attitude toward density.