There is no way, even in the wildest dreams of the highway lobby and of George Hilton, that they can build enough new freeways and add enough freeway lanes, to cope in 2009 with the enormous peaking of traffic that occurs at morning and evening rush hours. More lanes, as recently opened in Marin, provide only temporary relief until the extra capacity "attracts" more drivers. Congestion acts as a control and suppressant on automobile use.

Enter BART, which accommodates the twice daily surges in traffic, which would otherwise lock down freeway flow. IMHO from the environmental point of view the auto-freeway dominion sucks as a long-range transport system and BART's symbiotic relationship to it sucks too.

Meanwhile mundane transit systems like AC Transit suffer to the point where one of its directors has stated last week it may very well be going into a fare hike-service cut death spiral.