Tad Fettig, director of the critically acclaimed series Design ‘e2′ on the PBS network, recently sat down with an interviewer from wired.com to discuss Sustainable Transportation and how to best implement transportation models that encourage the smallest emissions of greenhouse gases and the least amount of environmental degradation. When the interviewer asked if we are experiencing the end of the American suburbia, Fettig said:

I think it is dead, and very worrisome. So many families have bought into it without factoring in rising fuel cost. The city is the future. Possibly, many smaller cities and large towns will help with smartly built mass transit, but I don’t think there are enough jobs to allow for a home/work life. I’m not sure. The computer age suggested a growing ability to work from home, but did not factor in the outsourcing and rising education of the rest of the developing world.

Fettig also believed that the sustainable transit model of Europe could not easily be transported to America -

“The danger to its implementation in the U.S. is the idea that it can be tested on a small scale first. It can’t. The implementation has to be total, to make it as convenient as a good subway system, at least. Building more capacity for cars will just encourage user expansion; that’s a race that cannot be won. Removing roads encourages the use of mass transit — it’s so obvious, it hurts.”

Today, Barack Obama promises economic vitality through a huge government stimulus plan on the order of $1 Trillion. Let’s hope Obama does not follow in the footsteps of Eisenhower and continue on the environmentally and economically unsustainable path of using federal dollars to spur job growth by building roads. He can only live up to his Change motto by breaking that trend; invest in mass transit and rail infrastructure or we are doomed to repeat our mistakes!