Charlotte’s new light rail. Yes, *that* Charlotte.

A couple of days ago BeyondDC wrote that behavioral changes, not techie doodads, are the answer to our environmental woes. Lest readers be tempted to think behavioral change among the American public is an impossible dream, we’ll make special note of a Reuters article reporting that American transit ridership hit a 50-year high in 2007. Reads the article:

Mass transit use increased by more than 2 percent in 2007 to the highest level in 50 years, with Americans taking more than 10 billion trips on public transport while the number of vehicle miles traveled was flat in the first 10 months of the year…

The largest area of mass transit growth was in light rail use, which includes street cars and trolleys, with a 6 percent increase during 2007. Commuter rails were second with an increase of 5.5 percent in ridership and subway ridership had an increase of 3.1 percent.

Cities with less than 100, 000 people also saw a large increase — 6.4 percent — in public transportation use.

Turns out Americans are not in fact intrinsically tied to their cars. Americans, like people all over the world, follow the path of least resistance. For the past 60 or so years a heap of financial and legal subsidies at every level of government has resulted in a system in which driving is the path of least resistance. But as gas prices rise and transit expands, maintaining those outdated suburban behaviors gets harder and harder, while change becomes ever easier. The more things change, the more things *will* change.

With apologies to Barack Obama – yes, we can.

Update: More on this in a discussion at Ryan Avent’s The Bellows.