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Can the Auto Industry Retool Itself To Build Rails?
knapper_tech writes "The scope of the auto industry troubles continues to increase in magnitude. The call to retool and develop new vehicles has been made several times already, but with all of the challenges from labor prices and foreign competition, how exactly can the industry retool itself to be more competitive? In light of superior competition facing losses, there doesn't seem to be enough room in the industry moving forward. In the context of finding a new place in the auto industry, the future isn't bright. Calls for no disorderly collapse of the cash-strapped big three and a reluctant congress can only point to an underlying lack of direction. However, consider two other standing economic challenges. The airlines have continued to struggle due to fuel prices and heightened security. Consumers backed off of SUV's due to high fuel prices, and while those prices have eased in the face of global recession, the trend will pick up again with growth in China and India leading the fight for resources. In short, things are moving less, and the industries that support the movement are in need of developing new products while consumers are in need of a cheaper method of transportation."
Read on for the rest of knapper_tech's thoughts.
knapper_tech continues:
"Looking abroad, it's clear the US has far less invested in local and regional rail systems. With regard to high-speed rail systems, the US is conspicuously behind. France's TGV is moving people at 574km/h. China operates the world's first commercial maglev line while the famous Japanese Shinkasen goes without mentioning. In the US there is only one line in operation between DC and Boston with a few more planned as a result of the 2008 election in California.
The traditional barrier to implementation of rail systems is the initial investment costs, but in the context of economic stimulus, such investment sinks are actually desirable. The auto industry has clearly taken note with proposals from companies like Caterpillar for huge new infrastructure projects.
A friend who recently bought a house observed that real-estate prices are on the rise nearer to city centers, where the fallout of mortgage problems and expensive, time-consuming drives from the suburbs can be avoided. Recalling the huge number of urban revitalization plans and efforts to increase the viability of older city centers, it seems as though many municipal governments would also be in line to gain from the added density of rail systems and increased activity they can support in downtown areas.
Putting it all together, it seems like now would be a good time to direct the industrial capacity of the automotive and supporting industries to developing local and regional, high-speed rail systems to provide a more efficient and effective infrastructure basis for US cities while essentially creating a new market where competition from foreign car manufacturers will not be a problem. At the same time, a huge labor force would be required. The task would call for engineers for development, factory workers for manufacturing, operators, and maintenance workers. Caterpillar still gets to sell construction equipment. The inevitable stream of stores popping up around stations would provide new commercial areas. Last-mile bus and taxi services would also have a new place. The list goes on.
Besides the savings in fuel, the US could also gain international prestige and possibly help lead China and India away from our mistakes, helping to stem the rising demand for oil globally and avoiding the attendant international tension. Climate change is yet another win in this scenario.
It seems like we're not exactly headed in that direction, and I'm curious to see what Slashdot readers think of all this. What pieces need to be in place to make the investments pay off? What are additional resources that are required? Can the industries really make such a change of direction? Do we have everything we need in the US? How would such systems work out long term? Would the initial investments be able to pick up fast enough to stimulate the economy?"
"Looking abroad, it's clear the US has far less invested in local and regional rail systems. With regard to high-speed rail systems, the US is conspicuously behind. France's TGV is moving people at 574km/h. China operates the world's first commercial maglev line while the famous Japanese Shinkasen goes without mentioning. In the US there is only one line in operation between DC and Boston with a few more planned as a result of the 2008 election in California.
The traditional barrier to implementation of rail systems is the initial investment costs, but in the context of economic stimulus, such investment sinks are actually desirable. The auto industry has clearly taken note with proposals from companies like Caterpillar for huge new infrastructure projects.
A friend who recently bought a house observed that real-estate prices are on the rise nearer to city centers, where the fallout of mortgage problems and expensive, time-consuming drives from the suburbs can be avoided. Recalling the huge number of urban revitalization plans and efforts to increase the viability of older city centers, it seems as though many municipal governments would also be in line to gain from the added density of rail systems and increased activity they can support in downtown areas.
Putting it all together, it seems like now would be a good time to direct the industrial capacity of the automotive and supporting industries to developing local and regional, high-speed rail systems to provide a more efficient and effective infrastructure basis for US cities while essentially creating a new market where competition from foreign car manufacturers will not be a problem. At the same time, a huge labor force would be required. The task would call for engineers for development, factory workers for manufacturing, operators, and maintenance workers. Caterpillar still gets to sell construction equipment. The inevitable stream of stores popping up around stations would provide new commercial areas. Last-mile bus and taxi services would also have a new place. The list goes on.
Besides the savings in fuel, the US could also gain international prestige and possibly help lead China and India away from our mistakes, helping to stem the rising demand for oil globally and avoiding the attendant international tension. Climate change is yet another win in this scenario.
It seems like we're not exactly headed in that direction, and I'm curious to see what Slashdot readers think of all this. What pieces need to be in place to make the investments pay off? What are additional resources that are required? Can the industries really make such a change of direction? Do we have everything we need in the US? How would such systems work out long term? Would the initial investments be able to pick up fast enough to stimulate the economy?"
I think that SUVs really say it all. An SUV is a gass-guzzling inefficient monstrosity of a car, yet its name "sports-utility vehicle" is meant to convey fun times and yet excellent functionality. Consumers were taken in for some time, but then they realised they'd been duped.
Now U.S. car companies are paying the price for trying to satisfy the market. The market has now moved on, and the car companies are are left with... SUVs.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Industries that are based on building 2000-10000 pound widgets have no particular reason to start building things that are several orders of magnitude heavier and more expensive. The neighborhood Dodge dealer is going to start selling switching engines?
I think not. You're better off asking Caterpillar to start building rail cars.
Besides, the big problem isn't building the individual rail cars. It's building the infrastructure.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Here is an artist's rendition of the new train currently being planned.
A major problem with electric vehicles is the weight of batteries. My suggestion is to build "electric lanes" on major highways. These would supply power to electric cars as they drive along, and so give them more range. Locally in cities, or at the home end of trips, you would use internal batteries.
If you can supply more power than the car is using, you can "charge while driving" and top off the internal batteries.
The way to transfer power to the cars (sliding contacts, induction coils buried in the road, etc), safety, and payment features are left as jobs for smart engineers.
GM used to make locomotives via its Electro-Motive Division (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro-Motive_Diesel). They sold the division back in 2005, and I don't see them reentering that market anytime soon, since General Electric now dominates it.
Seeing that they killed the rails, why would they want to build them?
Seriously, Detroit and SE MI used to have trains, cable cars, etc. But they were killed off so that everyone would buy a car.
They wanted to make a world with only cars. They can flounder in the world they made. Let some new business spring up and seize the chance to build. Let the automakers die off.
You have the cart before the horse. Customers define the market, not the business. First rule of business isn't starting with a good idea, it's doing market research and seeing what people will buy (how's that world-changing Segway selling?). If GM can't sell Americans what they want at a profit (cars) how the hell can they sell them something they don't want? The Big 3 should be emulating Honda, not Amrtrak.
The solution is not a bailout, by rewarding the same failed business model, but for the Big 3 to declare bankruptcy, shed their ridiculous labor costs (and spare me UAW's FUD and disinformation campaign, already heard it), and actually start making a profit per vehicle again - like all the other "American" auto companies (Toyota, Honda) have done in states outside of UAW's thumb.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
...but with all of the challenges from labor prices and foreign competition, how exactly can the industry retool itself to be more competitive?...
To me, the solution is and has always been simple and it's just one solution:
Build cars that people want to buy.
What are the metrics that will bring about this? Here is how: -
1: Build cars that are appealing to the eye. I mean, cars that are as beautiful to look at as they are beautiful to sit into.
2: Build cars that do not break just after their warranty mileage.
3: Build cars that are easy to repair...cars that even the Joe Six Pack will "understand."
4: Build cars that have excellent resale value. Not cars that lose 50% of their value in 1 year.
5: Build plants in USA. What these giants are doing is to close plants here while opening others in China in order to export to the USA. Absurd! Focusing on [short term] profits.
This is a quote from one auto industry insider GM/Ford and Chrysler were so short sighted! This is what they did: -
"...[They] created multiple versions of every product under a bunch of different brand names, hoping that if buyers shun one, they'll take a more favorable view of another..."
This is customers message to Detroit: "Consumers aren't that stupid. Give them a bit more credit, and you might have a future."
The rail industry regularly repairs/replaces cars and rails. They are in a better position to lay down new infrastructure. They already have the plans all laid out for new infrastructure, and it would be a viable investment for them if they had a little financial help from the government--the amount of financial help needed being much less than has been allocated to various industry loans.
And this is just for freight rails. We can start looking at passenger rails again when Amtrak starts making a profit.
The problem with the big auto companies, like GM, is that for every dollar they pay in salary to workers, they pay two for benefits and pension plans. Their labor costs are absolutely horrendous. The rest of their operations are similarly inefficient. They're going to have a real tough time competing no matter what they make.
Personally, I say let the big auto companies die. It's going to be a clusterfuck, but we can't just keep bailing them out year after year. Remember, the current dire state of affairs has come about after a decade of prosperity, and this isn't the first bunch of government cash they've asked for and gotten(in Canada at least)! The important thing is to find a way to keep workers employed and parts companies in business.
What is needed is not more of the same incompetence from the big 3. What is needed is for proven companies who know what they're doing in their respective industries to take over the auto plants. It's not very enticing though. These plants have the wrong equipment and the auto unions will probably make all sorts of trouble for them. This is where the money saved not bailing out the big 3 again and again can be used to offer incentives to lure these companies in. Likewise, parts companies that are run competently should receive short-term loans to help them transition to working with these new industries. Government intervention should be used like a surgeon's scalpel. Cut out the cancer and reroute blood to the healthy tissue.
..and solve three problems at once: Zero emissions, doesn't require fossil fuels, and more people will get off their fat lazy butts and get the exercise they NEED to be a reasonable weight and otherwise healthy.
What do you have against bikers? You're so mean.
Agreed. Use Perl unless undef.
The auto industry has been pushing their weight around for years to prevent hybrids and alternative power for vehicles. Obviously they were unwilling to change their ways and try to help the environment. Hopefully new companies will emerge that will be more open to innovation.
California's high-speed rail system isn't expected to be completed for at least another 21 years with the first operational segment not going live until sometime between 2019 and 2021, and at a cost of somewhere between $45 billion and $81 billion, depending on whose estimates you use. If $20 from every ticket were used to repay the construction costs using the lower figure, and if the ridership were at the upper end of the estimates (95 million per year), it would take about 23 years to repay. Other estimates suggest as few as 23 million riders per year, and if the upper cost estimate were used, it would take 176 years to repay the costs. Odds are that it will come in somewhere in between, but that's a very wide range with which to contend.
Aside from that, judging by the list of potential stops, there won't be time to get the train up to anything resembling "high speed" for the most commonly-used stops.
I pay $160 for a monthly pass on the local commuter rail line (VRE in northern Virginia). They're increasing fares by 7% next month, and they're still heavily subsidized by both the state and federal governments.
The population distribution in most of the US is simply not geared toward passenger rail except possibly at the local level (i.e., subway/light rail). This isn't Europe, and you can't necessarily repeat the same things that work in Europe and expect them to work here also.
most SUV's are nothing more than 1970's style station wagons with kits to give it more room off the ground and larger wheels. when rednecks put those big wheels on their trucks the coastal people laughed at them and how stupid they were. the same people are buying station wagons with the same kits and big wheels and paying a huge premium for it and calling them "crossover" SUV's or some other stupid name.
Toyota makes a station wagon version of the Avalon. It's called a Lexus RX and people pay $40,000 and more for it.
Are you serious? No, really, I wonder if you mean what you say.
Fuel cells are a few engineering problems away from being a viable solution for electric driving.
1)Any problem with the fuel cell unit itself can be solved with the application of money for engineering. It's all solvable, it just needs an investment of effort which translates into money.
2)To the whiners who say "We don't have a hydrogen infrastructure" I reply with this: Hydrogen can be produced ANYWHERE there is water and electricity. Every gas station in the civilized world has WATER and ELECTRICITY. All we need to do is drop an electrolysis station in their parking lot. This can be containerized and done with tractor trailers.
The whole problem right now can be solved with an investment that is far less than the banks needed. Less than the big 3 automakers requested. It would place our nation in the forefront of the energy industry and make us financially and strategically secure for the next century.
Or we can sit on our asses.
It's not necessarily sub-optimal. It may well be that the extreme emphasis on short term ROI has resulted in sub-optimal short term 'solutions' winning over the more optimal long term solution.
Meanwhile, various industry lobbiests such as airlines and aerospace manufacturers certainly haven't been encouraging a high speed rail program.
A strong drive for economic stimulus connected with workforce availability make this a good time to re-consider. Such programs are much harder to pull off politically when you're hiring people away from existing employers and the economy seems to be expanding nicely on it's own (even if the expansion is largely illusory).
It's notable that a number of those public works programs from the '30s are still paying dividends today.
But honestly, why? The US has demonstrated that there is little to no interest in pubic rail. Well, there may be interest, but when it comes down to the "money where your mouth is" part of the argument, rail measures have traditionally fallen short (and yes, sometimes at the hands of automakers trying to push their evil agenda of....selling their products). California and Hawaii have made gains on rail projects, but even those are years away from laying track.
Looking at this from the 500 mile view may make this absurd enough to clarify your point: You're saying that the Big 3, a group of companies that have either A. Inepted themselves to bankruptcy at the hands of idiotic management and/or greedy workers or B. collapsed as lines of credit disappeared and their customers easy access to the means to purchase their respective products vanished should.........completely leave the industry they created and rebuild themselves as the primary suppliers of a product that is:
1. Already dominated by foreign (or domestic. Hi GE!) suppliers who are already producing fine products
2. Outside the scope of what these companies have built in the last 50-ish years
3. So limited in demand there is a market for at most a few thousand of these items over the next decade, for companies that have been producing millions of a particular product,
4. Not a priority for a nation whose infrastructure is dominated by products these companies currently produce.
Yeah...Not gonna happen.
The Big 3 aren't the ones having problems. The AUTO INDUSTRY is having problems. Every manufacturer of automobiles has seen the sales numbers drop (at best) by 20% a month for the last three months. Even the industry's anointed "do-no-wrong, their shit smells like fresh cinnamon buns" companies Toyota and Honda are taking beatings. Hell, Toyota is going to take their first loss EVER. EVER. The Big 3 were in a bad spot because they were left holding the bag when gas prices skyrocketed. They were making what the public wanted, and were getting fat. Shame on them. Toyota and Honda benefited from their innovations, and the Big 3 have now gone into full chase mode. For the previous years, Toyota was chasing the Big 3 in the SUV and Truck market, and were getting their asses handed to them.
I do have to chuckle at the backlash against the UAW. The UAW is evil because they "bent the big three over the table during the fat years" by demanding profit sharing, and reaping fat bonuses for their workers. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart is evil because they don't provide benefits, make employees work unpaid overtime, and their management gets fat bonuses....
(I'm not too interested in the debate about wage disparity and the cost of labor vs the cost a car, I just find it funny that when a company doesn't provide something, the company sucks, but when a union bargins for that same thing for employees, they're being greedy assholes.)
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I agree with the first paragraph... I have no desire to wait around for a train to show up. Of course, the submitter of the story wants us all to live in urban environments, but alas, this is not the case for most of the US.
The second paragraph is flame-bait. No links? Foreign car manufacturers even in the US are subsidized far more than US counterparts. That's not FUD, it's a simple fact. Inside the US, they are subsidized.
"Spare me?" Is that an argument? Mod this down.
This Fox News meme about "government programs causing the great depression" is ignorance in action. It only showed up recently as some Rovian talking point.
Fact is that it was a combination of poor free market regulation and then the Dust Bowl disaster that threw things into disarray.
Try getting facts from someplace other than the Morning Zoo Croo.
Sure, they can retool to make anything, but the Big Three's problem is not the product they manufacture. If they produced things more efficiently than other manufacturers, they could leverage their processes, work force, and facilities to compete. But they don't have a competitive advantage in those areas, in fact, those are their weaknesses. US automakers should learn to make cars better in a modern global market instead of applying their poor model in other sectors.
In American industry, the more unreasonable the request, the better the engineers and workers assigned to the problem like it. American White and Blue collar labor loves and lives for the "moon shot" - we don't know how we'll do it, the current state-of-the-art says we can't do it, and we've got an irrationally short timeframe to do it in. Out of our way, we'll freakin' do it.
This is reflected in the Aerospace industry, in Silicon Valley, and even in Detroit. Ford asked their engineers and UAW workers to build a hybrid. They built one, then two hybrids that beat the everloving hell out of the Japanese models.
Here's the deal, tho... if Ford didn't have an "outsider" CEO, a guy who came from Boeing, it would never have been done.
There is a class of employee in Detroit who refuses to see the writing on the wall. Who refuses to alter the way they've been doing things for decades, convinced of their inherent superiority.
Not the UAW line workers. Not the pencil-pusher engineers. The management. The MBA miracles who have, in concert, done their damndest to run the US auto industry into the ground.
The engineers love a challenge, and American engineering stands for itself - from the original Model T to the Apollo Program to the Apple II. The workers stand for themselves, Union or not - Ford (Union) and Honda (Not) get about the same productivity from their American factories, and at the same cost, and it's a hell of a lot better than even the Japanese factories. (The problem facing the Big Three is actually =overproduction= - their factories churn out too much product that no-one is buying, because the product is crap, as mandated by MBA Miracles.) The Unions take pride in their work... you don't hear much about "those shoddy Boeing Jets", despite being engineered and made by Union members.
The management, the "money-men" - they all suck. Universally. This is the same class of management pros who ran Wallstreet into the ground. Fire them all, and put an engineer or a union boss in charge - I can guarantee a better product at a lower cost.
There is no light rail system in the world that can compete with a hybrid car in terms of environmental friendliness. Take a look at Patrick Bedard's article "Save Energy, Take the Car" from the December Car and Driver. '"Most light-rail systems use as much or more energy per passenger mile as the average passenger car, several are worse than the average light truck, and none is as efficient as a Prius,â writes Randal Oâ(TM)Toole in a new study from the Cato Institute titled âoeDoes Rail Transit Save Energy or Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions?"' http://www.caranddriver.com/features/columns/c_d_staff/patrick_bedard/save_energy_take_the_car_column
France's TGV is moving people at 574km/h.
Not quite; 574km/h was the maximum speed obtained on a special test run, using a train consisting solely of power cars (i.e., no passenger cars), with modified electrical systems and a special raised voltage, just to demonstrate the theoretical possibilities. The maximum speed day to day is 320km/h.
Not that that invalidates the rest of the article; passenger rail in the US is lagging behind the state of the art and, in many cases, behind the state of the practice (witness the state of Amtrak, which makes Britain's post-privatisation railways look like a model of efficiency).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just made a weekend trip from western ma to buffalo. About 350 miles. Round trip was over $130 dollars round trip, travel time was 9 hours. Plus all the before and after time dealing with a station, taxi/parking, etc
Even in my Jeep Liberty getting ~22 mi/gal it ended up being less than $100 including tolls. And this was when gas was over $1 more than it is now. Travel time was a smidge over 5 hours. Plus, when I decided to sleep in an extra hour before my return leg it wasn't a big deal. And when I got there I didn't have to worry about how I was going to get around for the weekend.
And this was just for me. If I had another 2 or 3 people in the car the train would never be cheaper even at $10 gas and chances are someone would have a better travel car than I have.
Now don't get me wrong. I tried, and really wanted the train to work. But it simply didnt for me. And where the price to drive stays pretty much the same when adding passengers, trains just start to add up more.
And this isn't just a US thing. On my company trips to northern France we would have people from other plants in France meet us. The furthest being Dijon, a pretty good 6-8 hour drive. Across the board they almost always avoided taking the train and preferred to drive. Especially if it was 2 or more people. It was simply cheaper, faster, and simpler. Outside of Metro areas I simply think trains are overrated.
Yeah, and Dell should switch to windmills too! After all, they have factories, and workers too, if not quite the right tools.
Changing the output of a factory that dramatically is harder than just building a new factory.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Rail has been a popular environmentalist cure for traffic, pollution and fossil fuel use since at least the Arab oil embargo of 1972.
The issues which have prevented its universal adoption across the United States are still here.
Don't hold your breath on rail.
Let's not assume your craptastic American rail experience is representative of a REAL rail system.
The train system in the US doesn't work because it is only a half-assed system. A real train system incorporates end-to-end solutions. It should be faster, cheaper, and more efficient than your automobile.
Look at Switzerland for a real rail system example. MUCH better than driving.
We need a wholesale replacement of the automobile transportation infrastructure system with a rail-based system.
Your car is expensive. It costs you $1000/month to own a car, with depreciation, gas, insurance, and so on. A rail-based system is MUCH cheaper to you than that.
Actually, the real solution is to burn down the suburbs.
It's the suburb, which were designed around the car, that's the problem.
There are smaller steps that could be taken to eliminate the suburban problem, though, such as putting small grocery stores right in the middle of the neighborhoods, and implementing telecommuting. These would help reduce total miles driven.
You know, as much as we've heard about the auto industry in the last few months, and their ailments, as well as endless ad nauseam fixes, there are a few things that *NOBODY* wants to talk about here, at least no one involved.
First off, tage a gander at CAFE regulations, or the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards set by the EPA in the US. This is something which, of course, was instituted after the Oil Crisis in 1972. In theory, its a nice noble set of standards for regulating better fuel economy in the US.
Now, in spite of the fact that these standards are something of a joke (they haven't changed a bit since 1992, and have only been increased a grand whopping total of 9.5 MPG since they were instituted over 30 years ago), there are a few peculiarities in the enforcement of these which, I think, are specifically causing or have caused the problems the Big 3 face today, and, in fact, were specifically caused by Congress and the Clinton Administration.
Now, buried within these standards is a little rule called the Two Fleet Rule. Essentially, what it says is that the foriegn produced cars imported by a company to the US are a different "fleet" from the domestically produced cars. It goes further to say that, in fact, if a car company (by default the Big 3) want to be considered "domestic" producers that the cars they produce in the US are, in fact, the only ones that count for their inclusion in the CAFE regulations.
Now, this has some nasty side effects, the biggest being that, in order to be considered "domestic" car producers, the Big 3 were actually forced to manufacture all of their vehicles in the US, regardless of whether or not they could actually afford to sell said vehicles at a profit. In other words, this "2 Fleet Fule" was a very specific sop directly to the Auto Unions and forced the Big 3 to produce and sell their economy cars a loss for 2 decades. Not only that, but since they were actually losing money on a huge percentage of sales, they were forced to concentrate production on the most profitable lines, namely SUV's and Minivans. Which worked great, sort of, for a decade or so. Until the public decided that a) gas was too expensive to spend in a gas guzzling vehicle, and b) the enviroment matters.
So, a downturn in large vehicle sales causes a double whammy against the Big 3, in that they can't afford not to make them, and the fact that they still have to produce a significant amount of small vehicles to sell at a loss since they can't make a profit anyway. Not only that, but they can't make a profit on increased sales of economically viable vehicles as those were already selling at a loss...
Sucks to be them.
So we need to blame government, specifically the Democrats but I believe the measure had decent bi-partisan support, for this mess. By giving a few people job security, they've endangered the well being of an entire industry.
Oh, and these are the same people we're trusting to solve the mess...
What could possibly go wrong?
Bill
If you're going to build an infrastructure, how about this idea?
How about building an infrastructure which consists of two parts. (1) Have a large network of electrified rails which can transport (2) a new type of electric car which can either run on the street via batteries or use this new electrified rail for long distance "freeway" style movement? The vehicle could be something like this... but runs on electric and uses the power from the rails...
That way, the current battery issue for electric vehicles would be solved and this time we can design this infrastructure to prevent accidents with various technologies built in.
Mass transit is neither cost-effective nor green. Per passenger-mile, it costs more to operate and generates more green-house gases than private automobiles. But don't believe me. Check out what the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, The Atlantic, and others have to say about it.
http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2004/c/pages/light_rail.html
Based solely on dollar cost, the annual light-rail subsidies could instead be used to buy an environmentally friendly hybrid Toyota Prius every five years for each poor rider and even to pay annual maintenance costs of $6,000. Increases in pollution would be minimal with the hybrid vehicle, and 7,700 new vehicles on the roadway would result in only a 0.5 percent increase in traffic congestion.3 And there would still be funds left overâ"about $49 million per year. These funds could be given to all other MetroLink riders (amounting to roughly $1,045 per person per year) and be used for cab fare, bus fare, etc.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/197910/197910
The received wisdom on this topic is easily stated: 1. It is self-evident that public transportation is vastly more energy-efficient than automobiles; 2. It is self-evident that investing money to improve transit facilities will attract many more passengers. Therefore, the national energy policy ought to give major attention to building new transit systems and revitalizing old ones. Unfortunately, both of these "self-evident" premises turn out to be false.
http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html
Particularly disturbing were the numbers for some of the worst transit systems, including the light rail in San Jose, which I sometimes ride. That system takes twice as much energy per passenger than private cars do. It's not even the worst -- that's Cleveland, which also is part of a grid more dependent on fossil fuels than San Jose.
http://www.gregburch.net/cars/plans.html
From a purely utilitarian point of view, it would be cheaper to simply buy compact cars for the poorest of the poor, or even subsidize some kind of taxi cab service for poor people. But that idea is too "way out there" - much stranger than ripping up our cities for years and years while the planners implement their expensive dreams.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Look, an auto company would have been a fool not to tap into the SUV fad--it was quick, easy money. The problem was only a fool would have seen SUV's for anything but a fad. A smart auto company would have pimped SUV's for as long as the fad lasted, but all the while plan for something else once the fad goes away.
The US automakers seemed to have thought SUV's would be a long-term trend and not a short term "cheap gas" fad. They put all their eggs in the SUV basket and forgot about the whole "long term" thing. Now they are Screwed with a capital S.
Maybe this business model doesn't work anymore. Maybe smart auto companies will engineer business processes that don't require 5 years of re-tooling between models.
Seeing as how they are making said cars on our soil, we just kick them out and re-purpose the plants to make stuff.
There are very good arguments for creating a "floor" to gas prices to a) stabilize oil prices and b) encourage domestic companies to create replacements.
Unknown to most of the people who've commented so far, freight rail in the US is making a big comeback. US rail traffic in ton-miles has doubled since 1980. LA opened the Alameda Corridor a few years ago, with three tracks in a trench, like a freeway, across LA from the port to connections to the rest of the US. Most major railroads are upgrading capacity. The work often isn't highly visible, because the upgrades are heavier rail, better ballast, better signaling systems, better locomotives, and better rolling stock. But it's happening.
Chicago is the bottleneck in the US rail system. A deal is about to close under which Canadian National will take over U.S. Steel's old railroad and upgrade it to route traffic around downtown Chicago. Suburban residents are bitching.
Why didn't I think of it before? What the US auto industry needs is.....A genuine, Bona fide, Electrified, Six-car Monorail!
Miss Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud...
Lyle Lanley: It glides as softly as a cloud.
Apu: Is there a chance the track could bend?
Lyle Lanley: Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Barney: What about us brain-dead slobs?
Lyle Lanley: You'll be given cushy jobs.
Abe: Were you sent here by the devil?
Lyle Lanley: No, good sir, I'm on the level.
Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can.
Lyle Lanley: Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear it's Springfield's only choice...
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: Once again...
All: Monorail!
Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
All: Monorail!
Monorail!
Monorail!
[big finish]
Monorail!
Homer: Mono... D'oh!
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Thus SUVs are monstrosities generally while trucks, locomotives and buses are generally efficient.
I just wanted to extend your example of rail efficiencies.
Trains also benefit from tracks that have been built as level as possible. Less energy is required to haul mass up hills or mountains. Roads take cars and semi trucks through many more elevation changes than trains encounter. A train also has very controlled and planned stops and starts. Trucks used to haul goods (and cars) are susceptible to traffic and must burn energy braking and accelerating repetitively throughout their routes. These are massive losses of energy that a train never suffers from.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
As an engineer, it drives me nuts to watch someone troubleshoot the wrong problem. American auto makers have no problems competing outside the USA. Why? Well, they are not subject to asinine CAFE standards, congressional regulations and miles and miles of red tape that have been added on to BIG EVIL AUTO MANUFACTURERS by the US Congress. Not to mention that each car made is heavily taxed at every level, from the top to the bottom. The feds, the state and local governments soak the BIG AUTO companies, they've been doing it for years, and now they've finally killed them.
It is also the Unions. Did you know that GM has roughly 90,000 workers, yet provides health coverage for nearly 10x that? Yes, nearly a MILLION people are getting lifetime health insurance benefits because of the Auto unions squeezing the tit of BIG AUTO, "those big evvvvvil auto bastards that make billions of dollars"... well, the auto unions should be jumping with glee, they've been working to kill the industry for decades just to prove that they hold all the power. Well, they proved their point and in doing so they have killed the goose - and we all know what that means; no more golden eggs. Today, GM is nothing more than an HMO health care provider that just so happens to have a side business of making cars. People blame the auto makers for signing the contracts allowing such generous compensation. However, what they do not realize is that the auto unions threatened massive amounts of immediate pain (strikes) for a labor contract that would meet with disaster in 10-20 years. The industry has had a gun to its head for the past 30-40 years, I just can't believe it took this long to kill them.
Every single other industry in America, when faced with similar treatment (Big EVVVVil oil, or evil [insert industry here]) they simply pulled up stumps and moved their industry overseas. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out when you're not wanted. Big auto doesn't have that luxury of moving away.
It is the foreign car makers that do not have to comply with CAFE standards, they're doing just fine. Nobody makes big, rugged hard working vehicles like the Americans can. People WANT to buy American vehicles, if they weren't so expensive due to regulations, taxes added to production costs, and union overhead added on to the sticker price of each vehicle.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
...have been in CANADA. Where they don't have to pay for crippling, expensive, private health insurance. The workforce in Indiana, Kentucky and Alabama are also of such poor quality there (low education level) that they have had to stoop to pictogram instructions at work stations. And Canada? High literacy rate, great quality workforce.
Time to get back to basics...invest in educating our populace and cease to be the last industrialized nation without some sort of guaranteed health care for all. Otherwise the rest of the world will continue to eat our lunch.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Fact: We have far more space to cover than most countries, and we cover it with highway, not rail. The auto industry knew, and knows, this. The problem is simply that the means of propulsion is in transition. Peak oil (see chart) seems to have pretty clearly passed, and even if it hasn't, geopolitical issues are having the same effect. So motive power is really the key issue here.
What Detroit needs to do -- and what I think it will be forced to do -- is convert to long range electric vehicles, that's all. Light through heavy. That's what the environment needs, that's what petroleum product availability will require, and that's what works with the US infrastructure.
They can do this. It's all about the power sources. Batteries are getting close to what we might be able to put up with, and the promise of ultracaps is still somewhere over the horizon (and if it ever gets here, that'll pretty much be the end of batteries.)
As for rail, land is too expensive / valuable in the US for any real rail development. Look at the highline, an east-to-west rail passage that is extremely busy; but no amount of congestion has been able to get the rails or the government to invest in a second line so that they don't have to delay trains by side-tracking them to spurs to let one train pass by another. This is where they already own the right of way. Nothing is going to get them to open new right of way. Financially speaking, it is incomprehensible.
Electric is the coming thing. Petroleum, hydrogen, hybrid, ethanol, all these will fall by the wayside, because nothing can compete with the distribution system or the mass efficiency of large electricity generating stations. Even petroleum produces far more power in a central electric generation situation, even accounting for transmission losses (which are not as high as most think) than it does being consumed on a per-car basis. But that's not the kicker; the kicker is that we can transition to any mix of any type of generation we want once the transport system is electricity based, because any type of electricity generation system can add power to the entire grid. That means a measured transition to nuclear, solar, wind, wave, geothermal, anything reasonable that comes along.
The problem - as always - is getting US concerns, both political and corporate, to invest in systems and ideas that extend beyond the next quarter, or at most, fiscal year. Everything is about the next quarterly report or the next election. The obvious weight, horsepower, pollution and efficiency advantages of electric should have anyone with any sense investing their heads off. Detroit will get the message eventually. That, or they'll die. And in that case, we'll have a whole new industry springing up, good riddance to the old.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Amtrak is basically a rural subsidy, linking together far-flung towns across thousands of miles of track, stopping frequently, because serving those towns is its main point, and the main reason that, politically, it hasn't been killed off yet.
Britain's rail system, by contrast, serves a densely populated, geographically miniscule island, more akin to creating a regional-scale system like Acela than a continental-scale system like Amtrak.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The Right believes that if you aren't an aristocrat, you need no retirement plan other than a straight razor and a warm bath.
(Or guns, pills, drowning... whatever, the important thing is, "If they are going to die, they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population.")
Of course, if you are an aristocrat, Heaven and Earth must be moved to make sure that you continue to live in opulent splendor. Hence, the huge bailout for the bankers.
So much makes sense when you understand this, society just clicks into place.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
It's 'you're', not 'your'.
-- Cheers!
Yay, more "blame the unions".
how about you read more from others in this response column who have noted that, at triple the wage union workers have right now, the cost of labor would still only be about 2k per car.
for an economy car, that leaves about 8k left. .. now let's get down to reality, in which labor is only about 600, and even if they used slaves the difference in costs would be.. *fanfare*.. 600 bucks less!
Do keep blaming the unions though for corporate's incompetence at engineering small, light, fuel efficient cars. No, that doesn't mean sacrificing that american tradition of visceral driving either. Japanese sports cars run on in-line 4's and 6's, and go faster on half the gas through competent engineering.
Stop blaming the unions.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
While I agree we (americans) have bought way too many SUV's and trucks for image sake, why does everyone blame the big 3? Hello. Have you seen a toyota sequoia? A nissan titan? Even honda's pilot ain't very efficient. Don't blame the big 3. Look in the mirror! The big 3 just built what you wanted. And japanese companies followed like puppies. The SUV's were cash cows and everyone wanted some. I think maybe the most popular suv I've seen is the lexus. And there is no way those are used for hauling manure.
You must have cornered the market on tinfoil in order to create that hat.
Oh, really? Then let's see you refute his positions. They all look entirely reasonable to me. But what would I know? I'm just a former econ major from a family of policy geeks who has actually researched all of these points.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Moving freight has the same problem. Load it onto a truck, bring it the first mile to a rail yard, load it onto a train, unload it from train back onto a truck at the destination, then truck it the last mile. All that loading/unloading kills any savings from using a train.
You haven't seen many trains lately. Huge numbers of rail cars are devoted to carrying truck trailers. Put 'em on the train at the point of departure, take 'em off at the destination. Hugely efficient.
One thing that many in the US would find incredible is that train schedules in Japan are so detailed that if a train arrives or leaves a minute or two earlier or later on certain days, that one or two minute difference is noted in the train schedules. There is no transportation system in the US that has the reliability of trains in Japan. There is no reason we can't have as good a transportation system as other countries. Somehow we've become a country that can't or won't do things anymore.