On your evening commute home, take a good look at the traffic and soak it in because we’re living at the end of an era. Although almost every household has a car today, and nearly six in ten own at least two, traffic’s reign over the American workday is beginning its sunset.

And it’s not because cities miraculously figured out how to solve the problem of public transit. If anything, the bullet train catastrophe of California demonstrates how ill equipped the government remains at solving the crisis of transportation.