Expand Auto Industry to Include Mass Transit
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Have You Driven a Bus or a Train Lately?
Jason Logan
By ROBERT GOODMAN
Published: November 18, 2008
Amherst, Mass.
THE federal government is giving General Motors, Ford and Chrysler $25
billion in low-interest loans, and the companies are asking for up to
$25 billion more. These same companies have spent millions of dollars
lobbying against federal fuel-economy standards and are suing to
overturn the emissions standards imposed by California and other
states. In exchange for the loans, Congress should first insist that
the automakers stop fighting these standards. But it should also make
sure that better outcomes will result from these billions than just
fuel-efficient cars.
The Obama administration should ask the companies, as a condition of
financial assistance, to begin shifting from being just automakers to
becoming innovative “transportmakers.” As Barack Obama’s new chief of
staff, Rahm Emanuel, recently said: “You don’t ever want a crisis to go
to waste. It’s an opportunity to do important things you would
otherwise avoid.”
As transportmakers, the companies could produce vehicles for high-speed
train and bus systems that would improve our travel options, reduce
global warming, conserve energy, minimize accidents and generally
improve the way we live.
This better way forward has been kicking around Washington for more
than 35 years. In a prescient 1972 art
icle in The Atlantic, Stewart
Udall, an interior secretary under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.
Johnson, warned of America’s excessive dependence on cars and called
for this approach.
At a time when almost no politicians and industry leaders were paying
attention to this problem, Mr. Udall made a bleak but accurate
prediction. He wrote that “the oil needs of the other industrialized
countries are growing faster than ours” and that this “surge of demand
will soon begin to send shock waves through the American economy and
transportation system.”
“Unless we exercise foresight and devise growth-limits policies for the
auto industry, events will thrust us into a crisis that will lead to a
substantial erosion of our domestic oil supply as well as the
independence it provides us with,” Mr. Udall wrote. He predicted that
the cost of petroleum imports would “give the Middle Eastern suppliers
a dangerous leverage over our transportation system as well.”
But Mr. Udall recognized that the country could not afford the economic
consequences of losing all of the automobile industry’s jobs and
profits. He proposed that the auto companies branch out into “exciting
new variants of ground transportation” to produce minibuses, “people
movers,” urban mass transit and high-speed intercity trains. Instead of
expanding the Interstate highway system, he suggested that the road
cons
truction industry take on “huge new programs to construct mass
transit systems.” And he called for building “more compact, sensitively
planned communities” rather than continuing urban sprawl.
As we now know, warnings like these went unheeded, and Americans became
ever more car-dependent. And now, the auto industry is asking for
government money that promises, even with more fuel-efficient cars, to
give us more of the same. Instead of supporting companies that want to
put as many cars on the road as possible, we need a transformational
strategy.
As part of its loan package, the government should insist on the
development of “transportmaker business plans” from the car companies,
with specific timelines for developing more fuel-efficient cars. The
companies should also provide detailed plans to transform some of their
factories into research and manufacturing centers for the development
of light-rail cars and high-speed trains and buses. (In some cases,
these could run on existing tracks and on the median strips of
Interstate highways; in others, entirely new lanes and tracks would be
built.)
Even before Mr. Udall, there was ample precedent for these ideas. In
the early 1930s, G.M. joined with other companies to develop the
Burlington Zephyr, a radically innovative train that broke world speed
records and cut train travel times in half. During World War II, the
auto companies converted their factories to b
uild not only military
trucks and jeeps, but also airplanes, weapons, tanks and other
vehicles. Ford’s Willow Run plant built thousands of B-24 bombers,
becoming the world’s biggest bomber plant.
The research and production capacity that the car companies built
during the 20th century could be adapted for the needs of the 21st. But
other companies should be able to bid for the same opportunities.
Stewart Udall rejected the view that American prosperity depended on
Detroit producing ever more cars. The financial crisis gives us a
second chance to make his vision happen.
Robert Goodman, a professor of environmental design at Hampshire
College, is the author, most recently, of “The Luck Business.”