A monocrop transit economy

With all the coverage lately about how public transit is straining under demand increases due to the fact that significant increases in the cost of gasoline are "driving" more commuters to public transit, and that there are limited slack resources for transit systems, and transit systems face increased energy costs as well, not to mention a loss in funds from declining gasoline tax revenues, I keep going back to thinking about monocrop agriculture.

Eventually, the land gets used up (also see "dust storms" during the Depression. And by not being diversified, when crops go bad due to disease (see "Potato Famine," Ireland) things can get really really bad.

This is the same problem with what is called "enclave development," which typifies resource extraction industries in third world countries.

We have a monocrop like mobility system centered around the privately owned automobile and to some extent airplanes, both dependent on oil. When the cost of oil goes up, this transportation system is seriously stressed, just like land is with monocrop agriculture or enclave-based resource extraction. Like those land systems, our transportation system doesn't have the ability to ramp up quickly in the face of such exogeneous shocks, and act differently.

Abe sends us a link to this CNN video, "Mass transit an afterthought?," which discusses this, through interviews with elected and appointed officials in the Atlanta region.