US Department of Transportation

On Monday, the US Department of Transportation published Beyond Traffic, a draft report projecting the state of the country’s roads, airspace, rail lines, and waterways 30 years from now.

According to DOT, this is what the nation has to look forward to in 2045: “megaregions,” driven by population growth, have turned places like Omaha into LA, traffic-wise; climate change has caused the seas to swallow coastal airports whole; and funding shortfalls have forestalled any chance of improvement, much less innovation.

The report was unveiled by Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx during a webcast chat with Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. At Googleplex, Foxx downplayed the doom and gloom, suggesting that the trends cited in Beyond Traffic should be interpreted not as inevitabilities, but as opportunities for government, private industry, and citizens to “choose the future” together.

“Part of what we’re trying to define in this plan,” Foxx said, “are the types of problems that are going to impact the outcome.” Where we live, how we travel and how far, how we ship our things—these questions, he added, “have implications for how much money we need to invest, but also what it is we’re paying for with that money.”

Perhaps not incidentally, Beyond Traffic was released on the same day that President Obama’s FY16 spending plan was delivered to Congress—a spending plan that includes $478 billion for surface transportation infrastructure improvements to be raised by taxing, at 14 percent, the overseas earnings of US corporations.