To use less oil, start with cars, but go further

As part of the price for a bailout of Detroit, Barack Obama has insisted that automakers commit to producing fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel vehicles.

Such change has long been resisted by U.S. automakers, but it is an absolute necessity. It would not only make the automakers more competitive in the long run, it would in time make our nation less vulnerable to foreign oil suppliers, reduce the wealth we ship overseas to buy oil and also cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

JAY BOOKMAN
MY OPINION

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But such changes by Detroit, important as they are, would be marginal compared to the transformation that government itself is now in a position to inspire.

As part of his economic recovery plan, Obama has promised a massive re-investment in our nation’s basic infrastructure. The goal is twofold: to put people back to work in the short term; and in the long-term build a foundation for a new prosperity once the economy rebounds, as it will.

In a speech earlier this month, Obama called his plan “the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.”

“We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule — use it or lose it,” he said. “If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges … they’ll lose the money.”

Note the model cited by Obama: the massive investment in the interstate highway system back in the Eisenhower era. In ways that could not have been imagined at the time, that decision helped to mold the way the country grew and Americans lived. It even influenced the product line of the U.S. auto industry, as Detroit designed its cars for an era of limitless asphalt and limitless gasoline.

That arrangement served the nation well for almost two generations, but with asphalt and gasoline now at a premium, that era, that America, is now passing. And for some, that change has been hard to accept.

Detroit, for example, could not bring itself to acknowledge that changing demographics, energy prices and lifestyles had changed the auto market. And because of that refusal to adapt, its market share began to decline. As recently as 2000, General Motors still sold 30 percent of vehicles sold in the United States; this year, that number fell to 22 percent and is certain to decline further.

The lure of the open highway also drove housing patterns, encouraging the spread of suburbs far from the jobs that sustained them and increasing our addiction to oil. But that too is now changing.

Metro Atlanta offers a great example. In the current housing crisis, the impact here is felt most severely in the low-income areas where people were already living close to the edge, and in the exurban areas that require long, congested commutes.

Today, land in many outer suburbs sits empty, stripped of trees and waiting for subdivisions that may not be built for decades, if ever. A lot of that property is being reclaimed by banks as collateral for failed development loans, but in time it may be reclaimed by nature as well.

Housing has been to metro Atlanta what automaking has been to Detroit, the prime industry driving the regional economy. And like Detroit, the product we’ve been putting out for the past two or three decades may no longer be responsive to market demand. A 5,000-square-foot home on a two-acre lot has become the lumber-and-stucco version of an SUV, popular with some but a niche product.

The Obama transition team has not put a dollar figure on its proposed infrastructure package, but estimates suggest it could be as high as $1 trillion. The infrastructure built with that enormous sum of money will set development and lifestyle patterns for two generations, just as the interstates did.

Inevitably, roads and bridges must be part of that investment.

But if Obama and Congress are serious about reducing our dependence on foreign oil and making this country more fuel efficient, a significant portion of that investment must also be put into projects such as transit and rail lines.

Otherwise, any reform they squeeze out of Detroit will be almost meaningless.