America's mass transport, enabling each individual to go where he likes when he likes, is the envy of the world; America's collec-tive transportation is a collective disaster. Yes, I use mass in the sense of mass affluence, that which the individuals of a mass enjoy in individual ways; and collective for the herd of individuals behav-ing identically. When will we learn not to endorse the terminology of the parasites?
From BART to Amtrak there is not a single system of collective transportation that is not deeply in your pocket to finance a grossly inefficient operation. Yet there is nothing fundamentally wrong with collective transportation when it is chosen voluntarily, as it was with trains and buses, and as it still is with airlines.
But on the ground there are places, such as Los Angeles, where there are too many cars on the road to permit either speed or clean air, and where more freeways are not feasible (though privately run monorails are). There are solutions on the technical level by more computer control to direct traffic signals for maximum efficiency. And once superstitions no longer block the access to energy, pollution can be drastically curtailed by electric roads
¾ for cars with pick-up coils to tap into subterranean power lines, using batteries only for driving on and off the electric freeways.But above all, there is the optimum way of allocating a scarce resource
¾the free market. If open space on the freeway has be-come scarce, remember what happened to open space for grazing animals. It was overgrazed when it belonged to everybody; socialism, whether in Africa, in the USSR or on the Indian reser-vations, converts meadows into deserts. But a private owner who charges a toll will lovingly look after his golden goose, and ever im-prove it to beat the competition. That is what can be done in Los Angeles (see "Toll road warrior," L.A. Times 9/10/89, available for a SASE from R. Poole, Reason, 2716 Ocean Park Blvd./#1062, Santa Monica, CA 90405; also their "L. A." issue, Aug./Sept. 1989, for $2.50)."There's nowhere to go but up," say Moller's supporters, relying on computer control of the commuting masses. But the sky has a limit. The number of enplaned US passengers has grown from 169 million in 1970 to 417 million in 1987, in a pattern that since the 1930s has not been far off from doubling every decade. The air-lines have coped mainly by increasing the size of the planes; a logistic curve fits this development fairly well, and the predicted 1,000 passenger jet by the early 1990s is technically feasible, but runs into problems with available runways. And is a 2,000 jumbo-jumbo jet really in the cards after that?
There may be some relief by the new trains
¾with old-fashioned wheels, but already on the tracks with speeds of more than 180 mph in France (with Britain and Japan not very far be-hind), and magnetic levitation trains at 250 mph may come off the test tracks in Germany in the foreseeable future. They are com-petitive with the airlines when one considers the time taken to and from the airport and the short distances flown in Europe (let alone Japan), though they will not displace commuter traffic, of course.But relief will come, I believe, from elsewhere, and the source is not often recognized. Technology not only creates its own demand, it also eliminates needs.
Who needs alum, whale oil, stage coaches, pocket watches, and candlesticks any more?
Even typewriters and fountain pens are dying.
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Vol. 17, No. 3
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 17, No. 3 Date: December 01, 2004 03:12 PM Title: Bipartisan deceit
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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