The entire idea of the “commute” would seem ridiculous in an earlier time. People didn’t live 100 miles from where they worked. With the introduction of a large nationwide highway system and the availability of cheaper cars, the commute was born. People flush with money from the GI bill and savings from the hard times of WW2 moved en masse to new “suburbs.” Planned cities where everyone got a small yard, a garage, and the world was perfect, or was it?

With the move away from city centers, and rapid increase in the number of cars on the road, it soon became clear that no amount of roads could handle the ever growing number of cars trying to cram on to them. Ever feel like you spend your whole life stuck in traffic? Well you are not alone: with the increase in the number of cars on the road, traffic congestion continues to worsen in American cities of all sizes. This gridlock is creating a $78 billion annual drain on the U.S. economy in the form of 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel—that’s 105 million weeks of vacation and 58 fully-loaded supertankers.

Talk about waste. A gallon of gas has about 19 pounds of CO2, meaning that 2.9 billion gallons of gas wasted means 55.1 billion pounds of CO2 needlessly pumped into the atmosphere every year.

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