As the world seemingly helplessly awaits the environmental devastation that will follow upon the introduction of millions more automobiles in China and India, a rare window of opportunity has opened here in the United States. To use one of the captive clichés of the moment, a crisis can represent an opportunity. GM and Ford are virtually bankrupt. Deservedly so given their sociopathic extraction of profits from gas-guzzling SUVs over the last two decades. Rather than re-tool for more fuel efficient automobiles, (a feat everyone acknowledges they could never do as well as the Japanese in any case), they should begin now to turn their manufacturing potential to the construction of rail cars and other modes of public rapid transit.It is all but certain that one hundred years from now (assuming the planet survives) the era of the privately owned and often single driver ridden automobile will be looked upon as a time when mankind irrationally put profits before the physical and mental health of the planet. Driven by sheer arrogance and greed, the industrialized nations (most egregiously here in the U.S.) disinvested in and even conspired to destroy a range of mass transit ranging from the old and efficient urban trolley systems toailing subway systems.
To look at photographs of the streets of Beijing, for example, just a few short years ago, with tens of thousands of Chinese citizens riding bicycles through the city’s broad thoroughfares, and compare them to current photographs which show those same thoroughfares now clogged with private automobiles is a tragedy in the making. Beijing’s air is already among the most polluted of all major cities. Within just this short time frame, respiratory diseases and obesity have risen in China. When challenged on pursuing such a course, China, along with the rest of the developing world, glares back at our hypocrisy. We have spent decades banging the drum for the American model of prosperity, and now that it is within their reach, the developing nations seem stubborn in their determination to be just like us—regardless of the costs. We have set a dangerous example.
The election of an African American to the presidency, married to the descendant of a slave, has pleasantly surprised people around the globe. We have shown how, in the worst of times, the nation has the ability and the will to recreate itself. How impressive would it be if the United States—long as much identified with flashy chrome and fin-laden gas-guzzlers as with Cokes, Levis and Marlboros—should renounce the waste of the past, acknowledge the private automobile as a luxury the planet can no longer afford, and turn its productive capacity to the creation of a mass transit matrix that would make even the Japanese with their clean, safe and efficient bullet trains, envious?
“What about all of those employed in the auto industry and its satellites?” The estimated three million jobs in the industry could easily be employed in the manufacture and maintenance of thousands of vehicles of mass transit. Only the extortionist oil corporations and insurance companies and the irresponsible advocates of planned obsolescence will suffer—a fate long overdue for them. A capitalist version of a car-free modern nation is possible. Profits can be realized, just as they once were in the rail and trolley age. Socially responsible profits, that is.
“How will you wean from their cars the tens of millions of Americans who have come to associate their cars with fundamental freedom of choice and freedom of expression, almost a God-given right?” Since we have no commissar of transportation who could merely make the automobile illegal by mandate, the public will have to be educated to the real costs of maintaining the present course. In addition to the initial cost of purchasing a vehicle, add the cost of fuel, maintenance, insurance, bridge and highway tolls. Add the loss of over 42,000 deaths each year (down from its 1970 high of nearly 55,000, a figure that matched the total loss of Americans in the Vietnam War each year) and the countless others who are injured. Add the liability and medical insurance costs. Add the cost of roads and infrastructure. Add the damage to the environment, the air pollution and the quality of life in cities and towns. Add the waste of precious and limited natural resources that will never be recaptured. Add the tendency to urban and suburban sprawl and poor planning that grows out of the necessity of incorporating the automobile into the equation. Add the noise. Add the parking tickets. Then imagine being unburdened of all of this and being able to walk a short distance and board a modern, fuel efficient and quiet mode of transportation that will get you wherever you want to go in a fraction of the time it currently takes. Just imagine. Science fiction? A utopian dream? No, one way or another, it is our inevitable future. And, who can tell? The American people may find healthier outlets for their desire to express themselves.
