How Many More Cars Can Our Roads Handle?

A recent study stated that by 2011 there will be nearly a billion cars on the roads throughout the world. Of course, the United States sure has its fair share. It is rather obvious if you live in a big city, just the enormity of the problem, freeways and highways are more like free-parking than free moving infrastructure for transportation flow. Indeed, the United States is not the only place where there are way too many cars.

In China and many other Asian countries the traffic is literally insane and getting much worse than Boston, LA, Dallas or DC during rush hour. In the US we produce and sell about 17 million cars per year and on average people keep those cars just under 10-years each. In Asia it was estimated that by 2011 there will be over 230 million cars there and that would be over 20% of all the cars in the World. In fact, there are barely enough paved roads to park that many cars right now.

The worst part about all these predications is that first, they are fairly accurate based on current rates of production, and second, that is a lot of fuel being burned and a lot of oil being consumed, thus a lot of pollution being made and a lot of competition for fuel.
Thus, supply and demand will cause a huge price increase in fuel as well. It has been said that the United States is a nation of cars, well so to is Europe and it is estimated that Europe will surpass the number of cars in the US by 2010. Let's hope that most of these cars are hybrids!