Emma Rothschild in the New York Review of Books (h/t: Brian Knudsen):
An enduring bailout, or a new deal for Detroit, would be different. It would be an investment in ending the auto-industrial society of the late twentieth century. This would involve innovation in public transportation, and in the infrastructure that would enable people to work at home or close to home. It would engage the information industries in making public transport more convenient, more enticing, and more secure. It would be open to the sorts of improvements that have been suggested in the expansion of rail and bus transportation in China, Japan, and France, for example, and in India by the information technology services companies.[18] It would be an investment, even, in the old promise of “automotive” freedom, of owning a car but not having to use it, and of being able to go anywhere at any time, in Asia as in America. The improved public transport would be used for routine travel, such as the “work, school, and medical/dental trips” on which public transit use is already concentrated, according to the National Household Travel Survey. The new hybrid vehicles, in a post-auto-industrial society, would be available for the other trips that the survey describes as “family, personal,” or “social, recreation, eat meal.”[19]
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:53 am
Nope. The car is an enduring and engrained image on the modern psyche, fuelled by advertising and the propaganda of Hollywood films.
Although Greyhound and yellow school buses have a nostalgic part in the US cultural landscape, it’s not for the same reasons. I’d love to see public transport users and use consistently portrayed positively in US films, or for a glossy advert for concessionary bus passes on prime time television.
It will take far more to wean society of its addiction to the car than improvements to public transport. No matter how excellent the service, there will always be a stigma that bus users are failures compared to the “successes” of those who drive around in German cars.
Instead, as the article touches on, the future, I imagine, is reducing the need to travel by developing smart neighbourhoods, increasing the dwelling density of city centres and remodelling suburbs by massive increases on fuel taxes and car parking charges.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:42 am
It’s like Dennis Miller said: “I don’t ride the bus, because I don’t want to sit next to the guy with the human thumb collection.”
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:24 pm
It is simple economics. Americans make too much money to waste their time on public transportation. The only place where public transportation has ANY market share whatsoever is NYC, where it is usually faster to take the subway than drive.
Seeing as how Manhattan style density is not going to be replicated anywhere else… public transportation is just folly.
And seing as how the Prius is pretty darn energy efficient, and getting moreso with the 3rd gen model coming online this year (just saw it at the Chicago auto show), public transportation doesn’t even have that going for it anymore.
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
With regards to hybrid cars, a few years ago the renowned Carnegie Mellon economist did an empirical study that showed that the savings to a consumer from energy efficiency were not enough to pay for the higher purchase price of the car. He concluded that the only way that it would make sense for a consumer to buy one would be if SUVs could be converted to hybrids. So, the hybrid point doesn’t go very far.
The more interesting point is that the American model cannot be extended to the rest of the world. Given that oil production has peaked, the Chinese and Indian societies cannot drive at the same rates (0.8 cars per person) as American society drives. Our system (5% of the world’s population, 25% of its energy consumption) is just not sustainable. We have to arrive at other solutions. Those solutions have to include living differently – i.e. living more densely, driving less, consuming less, maybe even growing some of our own food or buying local foods. But, it isn’t going to cut it to announce (as the previous comments have done) that Americans just like cars and suburbs too much to change anything. We have to change. Or as somebody said, “what can’t go on forever doesn’t”.
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Oops, I forgot to mention that the CMU economist who studied hybrid cars was Lester Lave.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Brian, the automobile has been increasing in efficiency at the rate of about 1% per year. In the past 20 years, that extra efficiency has been used to increase horsepower and vehicle weight while maintaining fuel economy (at the levels mandated by CAFE standards).
But if all of a sudden people decide that they value fuel efficiency higher than performance, safety, and luxury, there is no reason that that efficiency can’t be turned into fuel economy.
And if it is turned into fuel economy, it is just a matter of time, at that 1% rate of increase, before our energy consumption decreased greatly (from the 25% figure you reference).
And the Chinese and Indians get the benefit of starting from the stratosphere that we currently occupy. They get their Nanos and their Chinese made VWs with the latest fuel saving technology (or maybe a generation or two behind the latest, but still really good).