Thursday, May 22, 2014

A Time Lapse Decline





I tell ya if you really want to see the decline of the country all you have to do is limit your travel for a decade and then go back to some of your old stomping grounds.

OK I guess that really isn't an easy way to see the decline up front and personal for most people. I am in a unique position in that regard having been pretty well traveled before becoming a local only sort of fellow.

Remember last year when I had to take a couple of trips up to St. Louis and was amazed at the number of empty commercial buildings, lessened traffic and such? Well I had to make another run into the belly of the beast Tuesday afternoon and I was interested to see if my observations of last year still held true.

I mean c'mon we been a recovery a year or more since I was last there...snort :)

Last time I had ventured into the Gateway city I remembered the constant bumper to bumper traffic and how it took hours to travel a mere 20 miles earlier in this century. Man how I used to dread driving in that city. If I had to be somewhere at a certain time I always... I mean always... gave myself at least two hours of lee time. So when I went back last year I carefully planned my times and used circular routes to avoid it as much as possible. I noticed then the traffic was much, much lighter than I remembered but I was also going at much reduced times.

Well this latest trip I forced to go at just about the worst possible time of day. I was picking another driver up at the airport and his plane was scheduled to arrive at 6:15. Yikes that meant hitting the Western suburb areas, those towns with names that all seem to start with a W for some reason at about straight up 5PM and then continuing East across the river to the airport.

At least I was heading East and not West, which is the way most people go trying to get home after work.

There hasn't been any work done on I-70 since I traveled it almost every day a decade or more besides some resurfacing. The lanes still went from two to three to four at the same spots with no fifth one added that I saw. Yet this trip I was actually able to use the cruise control on the vehicle I was driving. 

This is astounding in and of itself because ten years ago you couldn't use cruise control on I-70 anywhere East of Kingdom city due to all the truck traffic.

To make a long story short here I hit St. Louis at peak travel times minus maybe 30 minutes and the traffic looked to me like I remember it being at about 3AM.  I could switch lanes, there were actually open spots between vehicles, and no one tried to squeeze a pickup truck into a space the size of a volkswagon that I saw.

This may honestly explain why we are not seeing all the articles about crumbling roads like we used to. They aren't important because they aren't being traveled as much.

I can tell you first hand at least in that small part of the world traffic is down by way over 50% of what it was a decade ago.

Recovery my A$$.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!


11 comments:

  1. Your observations continue to confirm to the T what Kunstler said in The Long Emergency. That's not good, because his book predicted a very bad ending for us as a result of all this decline and decay.

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    1. Isn't Kunstler the guy who wrote "world made by hand"?

      I finally got around to reading that back in like November or December and I was kinda disappointed in it. Maybe I should look into the "Long Emergency" though.

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  2. Gas prices should be way down but they aren't.

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    1. Matt - Read my reply to Sf below on the gas prices.

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  3. I see lots of things that on the surface look like recovery but if you look closely the government is giving someone a tax break to bring the business to the area or is a government project. It is all being done with money that has been confiscated from one group of people to be used for the benefit of other often rich people. It is a false recovery as it is government financed. Gas prices are not down because the dollar is losing value and they ask for more dollars. If you look at the big picture, the price of gas may have gone down but you can't tell it because the price of the dollar also went down. Oil may be more stable than the dollar but you will never hear a squeak from the media.

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    1. Sf - I think St. Louis has had more time to scam the system. Something like Detroit because the other cities around here seem to be doing better. At least the ones with a tap into federal money as you mention.

      As for oil. You guys should check out the Our finite world blog down in the peak energy section ont he right. She has a new post up that explains the reasons for this round of oil prices not dropping. That woman is a genius when it comes to the economy and energy connections.

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  4. This weekend we are going over to the east side of the city to the free zoo. I will check out old hunts on the way home and post what I see. Here in our rural community there are some buildings sitting empty still, one was the town ACE Hardware store. If you can't keep a hardware store open things are bad.

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    1. Rob - I would be interested in hearing your observations. There is a warehouse out by my old place of employment that has been vacant for almost 12 years and has never been occupied either.

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  5. The Willamette valley & Portland traffic is getting worse than ever. California residents are all heading north. Can't say as I blame them, I wouldn't want to live there either, but why do they all have to come here? They invariably bring their politics with them, even though that's what's chasing them out.

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  6. I have mentioned several times every farmer always had a back lot full of old outdated equipment, but about 5 years ago all those piles of equipment went to the scrap yard. Now I can't find old metal anywhere. Around here, a lot of the scrap is being picked up by the many (and I do mean many) men drawing disability checks and there is really nothing wrong with the men so they are entirely capable of loading up heavy scrap metal. They use that for their secondary income.

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  7. Traffic, and traffic jams caused by accidents, is up around here. But central NC is the poster child for our new economic prosperity. More employment, but at less wages.

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