[PRCo] Fwd: Mass Motorization and Mass Transit: An American History and Policy Analysis

[Schneider Fred]

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Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Jack May"
> Date: December 24, 2008 12:59:59 PM EST
> To: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> Subject: FW: Mass Motorization and Mass Transit: An American  
> History and Policy Analysis
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Herman T Stichman, Trustee
> Some of you might find this review (and the book itself) of  
> interest. Jim
>
>
> David W. Jones, _Mass Motorization and Mass Transit: An American  
> History
> and Policy Analysis_. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.
> xiii + 269 pp. $40 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-253-35152-4.
>
> Reviewed for EH.NET by James A. Dunn, Jr., Department of Political
> Science, Rutgers University - Camden.
>
>
> David Jones, a historian who served as research manager at the
> University of California's Institute for Transportation Studies,
> critically examines the key policy junctures in the intertwined  
> paths of
> the mass transit sector and the automobile/highway system in  
> America. He
> draws on a wealth of historical data, market trends, private decisions
> and public policies that shaped urban mobility from the 1880s to the
> 2000s. He highlights America's "exceptionalism" with instructive
> comparisons to other nations' experience.
>
> American has been "uniquely proficient in the commercialization of new
> transportation technologies." The U.S. led the world into the electric
> transit era. In 1890, New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia each
> had two to three times more per capita transit trips than London. Then
> speculative overinvestment damaged the industry's credit. When this
> combined with souring relations with local governments and labor union
> troubles, the industry's financial position became one of steady  
> capital
> disinvestment -- even before the First World War. Peacetime transit
> ridership peaked in 1926, as prosperity and motorization took off.  
> Again
> the U.S. led the world, this time into the automotive era. In 1925 the
> U.S. motorization rate was 172 motor vehicles per 1,000 population.
> Britain and France had only 20 and 18 motor vehicles per 1,000 people,
> respectively. Despite the Depression and the total cessation of
> automobile production during World War II, the American motorization
> rate doubled by 1950.
>
> The transit industry, despite heavy ridership during the Second World
> War, could not attract new capital or hold onto its riders after 1945.
> As he did in his excellent 1985 book, _Urban Transit Policy: An  
> Economic
> and Political History_, Jones here points out that the transit
> industry's labor-management rigidities, organizational weaknesses and
> the unsuitability of its radial networks to post industrial,
> decentralized metropolitan regions were holdovers from its glory years
> of 1890-1910, when it had a virtual monopoly on motorized mobility. He
> correctly has no time for conspiracy theories about auto, oil and tire
> interests forcing the abandonment of streetcars. He even argues  
> that the
> 1956 Interstate Highway Bill can not be blamed for transit's  
> problems in
> the 1950s and 1960s. Motorization and suburbanization would have
> proceeded almost as fast without the Interstate, as states would have
> upgraded four lane highways and authorized toll roads.
>
> When the Congress decided to rescue transit in the 1960s, it paid too
> much attention to big city mayors, downtown businesses, and commuter
> railroads. It focused federal subsidies too narrowly on expensive new
> rail systems. In hindsight, Jones argues, it would have been better to
> have dangled federal subsidies to entice transit unions and local bus
> operators to abolish outdated labor contracts and adopt new work rules
> to permit part time labor and contracting out of some service to owner
> operators of taxi-vans. This is what Las Vegas and its union  
> finally did
> in 1993. Since then Las Vegas' transit trips have grown from 15  
> million
> to 50 million and transit's share of commute trips has risen by 128
> percent. Nationwide, however, the hundreds of billions in public
> investment in the transit sector over the last four decades have
> stabilized ridership per capita, but at a level very close to its
> historic low. Thus transit can play only a limited role in reducing  
> the
> externalities of our mass motorization, particularly the balance of
> payments burden of imported oil, growing CO2 emissions, and the  
> cost of
> military intervention in the Middle East.
>
> Jones' final five chapters focus on the problem of making our
> "pervasively" motorized society more sustainable. A large part of the
> problem is the U.S. auto industry itself. In his ominously prescient
> words: "in 2004-2007, the American automobile industry has experienced
> financial difficulties strikingly similar to those experienced by  
> street
> railways following World War I ... recent revenues have been
> insufficient to support the cost structures created during the golden
> days when they dominated the U.S. market." (p. 189) With almost all
> their profits coming from the "light truck" segment of the market,
> American auto makers are vulnerable to gasoline  price spikes as  
> well as
> to political pressure to improve fuel economy and lower CO2 emissions.
> They will have to make a "transformational change in the technology of
> the automobile," and they will need a great deal of financial and
> regulatory support from public policy to pull it off.
>
> Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles seem to be Jones' candidate for the
> transformational change. He identifies five preconditions that have to
> be met before hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can be widely diffused: cost
> competiveness with conventional vehicles, creation of a fueling
> infrastructure, decentralized reformation of natural gas into hydrogen
> at fueling stations, sequestration of the CO2 emissions associated  
> with
> reformation, and acceptance of hydrogen's safety by the public. He
> admits that the best estimates of the time frame for this extend  
> from 15
> to 40 years in the future. Curiously, he gives almost no attention to
> electric vehicles, whether all-electric or plug-in hybrids. Electric
> power faces far fewer infrastructure and CO2 sequestration issues than
> hydrogen. And even GM's California-mandated EV1 from the 1990s seemed
> popular with its "owners" who did not want to give it up at the end of
> their leases.
>
> Finally, given how low American motor fuel taxes are compared to other
> highly motorized countries, Jones makes the case that a fuel surtax is
> the single best step we could take now. A 50 cent per gallon surcharge
> would barely bring U.S. gas taxes up to Canada's level. But it would
> trigger a "cascade" of incremental, positive adjustments: people would
> buy more fuel efficient cars, manufacturers would produce more of  
> them;
> more expensive gas would encourage more people to ride transit, and  
> also
> provide more money to make transit more attractive. Jones admits that
> the surtax is "not an easy sale," which is putting it mildly.
>
> Jones has given us an excellent and insightful guide to the  
> achievements
> and mistakes of twentieth century mobility policy. Looking forward, he
> is both appropriately modest in recognizing that historians can not
> predict the future and appropriately urgent in pointing out the  
> serious
> policy problems we must solve to preserve the American system of mass
> motorization.
>
>
> James A. Dunn, Jr. is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers
> University - Camden. He is the author of _Driving Forces: The
> Automobile, Its Enemies, and the Politics of Mobility_ (Brookings
> Institution Press, 1998), and co-author, with  Anthony Perl, of
> "Reframing Automobile Fuel Economy Policy in North America: The  
> Politics
> of Punctuating a Policy Equilibrium" _Transport Reviews_  27, no.1
> (January 2007), 1-35. His email address is jadunn at camden.rutgers.edu.
>
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