Is this the end of the age of the automobile?

[babsbunny]

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2009/1731

Harvey Wasserman

March 9, 2009

As a dominant form of transportation, the automobile is dead. So is GM, which now stands for Gone Mad.

But the larger picture says that the financial crisis now enveloping the world is grounded in the transition from the automobile---and the fossils that fuel it---to a brave renewable world of reborn mass transit and green power.

If GM lives in any form, it must be owned and operated by its workers and the public.

But the larger transition is epic and global, based on a simple structural reality: the passenger car is obsolete. Auto sales have plummeted not merely because of a bad economy, but because the technology no longer makes sense.

Franklin Roosevelt took GM over in 1943-5 to make the hardware to beat the Nazis. Barack Obama should now do the same to beat climate chaos.

[derby378]

1. Toyota

One-word refutation of the basic premise.

The automobile as we know it is on its way out - to be replaced by a greener version of itself.

[Tesha]

18. Even a Prius is unsustainable in the long run. (NT)

[WinkyDink]

2. Suburbia would beg to differ.

[Tesha]

17. Suburbia doesn't know it, but it's dead too.

Exurbs will survive because that's where the food is grown.
Cities will survive because their population density is high
enough to justify bringing in the food by truck or rail.

Suburbs? Not so much.

Tesha

[burythehatchet]

20. need to go watch End of Suburbia again

[babylonsister]

3. I'm not walking.

x( Gets too hot here.

[iamthebandfanman]

4. im still waiting on my hover car.

damnit.

[ogneopasno]

5. Well, I'll always need one. But I do have my 1971 IHC pickup I could drive, I guess.

[HubertHeaver]

6. Buy horse futures.

[burythehatchet]

32. Only if you're bullish on glue. There will insufficient resources to feed horses

that are kept as a mode of travel

[defendandprotect]

7. Right . . . every reason to take over this treasonous industry . . .

and to set the workers to making electric cars and converting gas-guzzlers to hybrids!!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

8. Not in Texas, it's not.

We have to drive 200 miles to the nearest big city (Houston to San Antonio)and you're telling us to ride the subway???

[SoCalNative]

10. No, but light rail

above ground commuter trains would be feasible.

Or, perhaps a move closer to an actual city if you need to go there with any regularity.

[Mugweed]

11. They already tried light rail in Central FL

It turned into a fight between Disney, Sea World, and Universal as to who gets the stops. It turned from something to get commuters off the road into something to get tourists from the Orlando International Airport to Disney and the like.

The actual residents here get screwed in favor of tourists every time.

[Raskolnik]

23. So all small to mid-sized cities are going to be serviced by light rail or commuter trains?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is just impossible.

[Tesha]

30. Busses may make an amazing comeback, though. (NT)

[vadawg]

27. screw that, i moved way out to the mountains to get away from the city

not everybody wants to live in a city, theres also no way you are going to get public transport to all the places were we grow food etc.

[Ezlivin]

13. We need high-speed rail transit NOW

There's been a lot of talk about a DFW-Austin-Houston line, which would be a good thing. The technology exists, the ROW can be obtained and there are passengers waiting. But until we can quiet the airline lobbyists we'll always fight an uphill battle.

[Mugweed]

25. FL is the only state that has everything in place,

but our governor is oddly silent about grabbing part of the available $8billion to get a high-speed rail system going.

[Ezlivin]

34. My Dad's an old Florida native and what he tells me is sad

He remembers the street cars in Tampa and used to ride them all the time. By the time I was old enough to start forming memories, Tampa's street car lines were long gone.

We often talk about how nice a "bullet" train would be, but he's 80 and doesn't think he'll get a chance to ride on one. (He's a big rail fan.)

[Tesha]

19. Maybe you won't live there in a decade or three.

Maybe you'll be taking the bus.

Tesha

[madrchsod]

9. no....the passenger car will be around for the foreseeable future

[Tesha]

21. Sure, but you'll need cinderblocks to hold it up once the tires rot. (NT)

[damntexdem]

12. Likely either that or, the automobile will be the end of the age of the human.

There is still, of course, need for personal transport. But its form must change.

[Bread and Circus]

14. No. But its the beginning of the end of the dominance of the internal combustion engine.

[AntiFascist]

15. The oil companies need to go next...

they have way too much control over foreign policy.

[ThomWV]

16. It won't happen until something else provides the utility at a lower cost

[burythehatchet]

22. In 2007 I bought a Honda Accord and when I signed I said to myself

this is the last internal combustion engine I would probably ever buy.

[Tesha]

31. We've had the same sort of thoughts about our current stable of horse(power). (NT)

[Pavulon]

24. nope, people still ride horses because they enjoy them

so I will drive cars as long as i can. It may not be my day to day but driving a nice sports car is a fun experience.

[lapfog_1]

26. More profound and yet, less scary.

It's the beginning of the end of the age of oil.

Automobiles and such, maybe, maybe not.

However, we were never going to have enough resources or energy on this planet to provide a western
lifestyle (two cars, home in the 'burbs, supermarkets with cheap food year 'round), for all 7 Billion
of us, not to mention the likely 12 Billion in less than 40 years.

[LanternWaste]

28. I hope so...

I hope so...

I imagine that one hundred years ago, a lot of people on horseback thought that the Auto Mobile would never work and found hundreds if not thousands of reasons to scoff at it, ridicule it, and oppose it-- some reasons good, some bad. But in the end, we evolved to the needs of a changing world.

I'm confident we can do it again.

[fishwax]

29. i hope not

and no, I don't think it will. The end of the automobile as we know it, perhaps, and I hope and think the internal combustion engine's days are numbered, but I disagree with the article's suggestion that the technology of the automobile no longer makes sense. I am all for more public transportation, on local, regional, and national scales, but I think there remains a great value in automobility as well.

[cherokeeprogressive]

33. Not hardly.

[anonymous171]

35. Not everyone has the luxury of living in a city where mass transit is feasible. nt