With the population growth we are witnessing, and with it continuing well into the future, we need the help of all the innovative technology we can get, as well as the basic maintenance and continued upgrading of our existing infrastructure.
Technology to help cities manage booming USA; Innovations ease transportation, energy, water needs
Haya El Nasser
USA Today
April 25, 2007
Commuters stuck in creeping traffic are bound to wonder: If streets and highways are this clogged when the nation has 300 million people, how will 400 million ever get around?
Blackouts in cities such as New York, Cleveland and Detroit in recent years raise questions about what will happen when aging electrical grids can't send enough power to heat and cool more people.
Planners looking at the boomtowns spreading across the Southwestern desert are asking: Where's the water going to come from?
The USA is growing more rapidly than any other developed nation and is projected to gain an additional 100 million people by 2040. That will put new pressure on a public infrastructure that's already stretched thin.
As scientists, engineers, builders and public officials grapple with how to accommodate the nation's unprecedented growth, small steps being taken today could chip away at the challenge. The focus: technology that could revolutionize how traffic moves, power is generated and transmitted and water is recycled, as well as where homes are built.
The challenge is daunting: At today's consumption rates, the nation will need another 280,000 miles of highway, and 78 million more cars and trucks will jam roads by 2040, according to the Federal Highway Administration and the Center for Environment and Population, a non-profit research and policy group in New Canaan, Conn.
Based on current energy use, the country will need to build more than 500 medium-sized power plants to generate the extra electricity the USA will use by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy.
If the USA's per-capita water use for home, industry and agriculture remains 1,500 gallons a day, it will need another 150 billion gallons each day -- about three times what California now consumes.
