The next new paradigm...

(this is my response to an email thread generated by the talk of a bailout for the Detroit-based carmakers, and a mention of a maglev railroad technology, Skytran)

I think we're in a historical moment, but people are not recognizing the need to change the paradigm. For example, all the bullshit writing about how fixing the car companies should come out of gas taxes, or that the companies should have to rebuild transit systems. Note that this (1) diverts monies from important things to something else; (2) gives responsibility for transit to people uncommitted to it, and not successful at their jobs and mission as it is.

There is a new "experts" blog at the National Journal on transportation and I haven't written about it yet because I find the first blog entry and the responses ("How To Write The Next Transportation Bill?") troubling for a couple reasons:

1. Many of the writers focus on automobile based mobility as the foremost priority of US transportation policy;

2. There is a failure to acknowledge the deep disconnect between local infrastructure needs and local public finance.

For example, the Reason Foundation guy says that Federal money should only go to national priorities. Yet few local jurisdictions, even NYC, have enough money to pay their own way for road and transit infrastructure. States don't have enough money either.

We can argue that the gasoline-dominated mobility paradigm affects and effects the national economy and the federal budget in a variety of ways, including even the cost of the military in terms of protecting access to global oil supplies. So the national priority should be to reduce oil use for economic, foreign policy, land use, and other reasons, right?

Your Skytran isn't a paradigm in itself, just a technology-system, that is a part of a set of services that could be offered as part of a new mobility paradigm no longer centered on private automobility.

To get to that paradigm many other changes must happen in concert in terms of land use, especially intensification, land tenure and housing type, infrastructure development, infrastructure investment, financing, etc.

Remember the stories about the development of the railroads and industry barons such as John D. Rockefeller or John Work Garrett, the Goulds, the Vanderbilts, etc. Getting to a new mobility paradigm isn't easy, and it's not likely to happen by January 20th, when Barack Obama becomes President, it won't likely happen by the time the reauthorization of the Transportation bill comes in 2010, especially when you have our political leadership thinking like this:

... because members of the committee wanted to turn the session into a special edition of "Car Talk." Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) spoke of his '99 Jeep: "It probably has about 150,000 miles on it, and it's still running doggone well." Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) invoked his '98 Jeep Cherokee: "Small problem with the back hatch staying open; we can talk about that afterwards." Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) praised her Chrysler minivan. Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) had good words for her Jeep but complained that it didn't come in a hybrid version.

"I drive the same '66 Plymouth Valiant that I've always had," Ackerman proffered. He went on to discuss a problem with the GPS system in his Cadillac. "I wanted a loaded car in blue; I had to reach out to five states to find one in blue," he complained.

It seemed everybody had a car story to tell. Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) let it be known that he was a car dealer for 25 years. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) disclosed that he had worked at the GM plant in Framingham. Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.) wanted to see more ads for the car made in his district, while Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) said the Edsel was once made in his home town. Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) read from Cicero and held up photos of cars. And Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) had no car stories to tell but delivered the surprising news that the problem with the Titanic was not its collision with an iceberg.

Detroit area lawmakers made passionate arguments that the carmakers had already done what "they possibly can to restructure and become globally competitive," as Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) put it.

(from the Washington Post "Flying From Detroit on Corporate Jets, Auto Execs Fly Corporate Jets to D.C., Tin Cups in Hand").

But it will happen, because gasoline supplies are declining and demand is increasing.

But since we don't do adequate national transportation planning--despite the US DOT and Congress and all the various interest groups--it's going to take us a long time to get there, just as it took a long time to build the road infrastructure and to destroy the economics of local rail-based transit, and regional and national passenger railroad systems.

-- website on the transportation authorization bill
-- National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission (produced a Final Report on what the priorities should be in advance of the new bill)