Dear Matt Logan,
History has shown that you had better not tie your long range thinking
to "short-term" phenomenon. Your wishful thinking about "the new order"
of American travel is hardly a certainty any more than it was in the
Carter gas line crisis. Of course our oil supply is a big campaign
issue and ever "Move-on.org" is shaking over the consequences to their
Democrat candidate Barak Obama. Today they have mounted a counter
attack citing the "right wing" and talk radio for convincing most
Americans we need to expand capacity at home which has been stifled by
Democrats. Of course the auto industry is responding because they MUST
respond in the short run. They must adjust production to the fickle
public or else. The showrooms demand just what people are
buying--today. Back in the Carter crisis, I bought about as large a car
as you could find and it was depressed from just a few years before--a
Gerschtenschlager Bookmobile which had been used in S. Dakota. In the
following years I drove my "house car" to both coasts. Don't expect
that personal choice in car purchases will profoundly change quickly.
The change is at the margin and our current crisis IS that margin. The
fact that heavy and larger cars are safer cars is not a fact or
understanding subject to whims. We cannot predict the oil production
very far in the future any more than we can predict the highway usage
which you seem to imply is the new reality. Certainly if we get sucked
into a war expansion with Iran, we might all be on bicycles, permanently.
Eric Westhagen
Matt Logan wrote:
While I am on the subject of dealing with the decrease in gas tax
revenue, USDOT has released a plan to deal with the situation:
http://www.fightgridlocknow.gov/index.htm
(The word "bicycle" is entirely absent from the materials on the site.)
I would note that a key focus is on "dealing with congestion" as opposed
to simple maintenance. It occurs to me that a congestion-centric focus
is obsolete in these times of safer roads and less traffic.
The video on the home page is a real hoot. In it, Mary Peters suggests
that reducing our fossil fuel dependence somehow hinges on utilizing
private sources of funding for highway projects. I guess if you believe
that the amount of fossil fuel consumed by congestion, if saved, would
be sufficient to give us energy independence, then this makes sense.
The problem is that historically, increased capacity has lead to
increased driving and fuel consumption via a phenomenon called
"triple-convergence".
And one more tidbit I'd love to know more about:
Why is the highway trust fund going to run dry in 2009, yet there's $8
billion sitting there unused in the transit fund? We have news reports
of overloaded transit systems and it seems the feds are dragging their
feet on funding the improvements to make mass transit in this country
more efficient.
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