Between
the cost of purchasing an automobile, fueling it, repairing
it and paying insurance on it, car ownership
is getting very expensive: Since 1999, the IRS
standard mileage deduction has increased from 31
cents to 50.5 cents -- an increase of roughly 60
percent. Meanwhile, roads are getting more crowded
and travel delays worse. Nationally, congestion
costs per peak traveler have jumped from $533 in
2000 to $796 in 2005. Moreover, cars remain
deadly: In 2006, more than 42,000 Americans died in
traffic accidents.
Those
are just the problems that we can readily measure.
Cars also contribute to pollution through tailpipe
emissions, dump greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere, and prop up the price of petroleum,
which subsidizes hostile regimes and complicates
United States foreign policy.
Surely,
one would think, Americans should be abandoning
their automobiles in droves and seeking
transportation alternatives. But we're not. We
persist in our devotion to automobiles. Indeed, with
each passing decade, more Americans drive solo to
work and fewer carpool. Despite billions of dollars
of government subsidies, mass transit can't gain
significant market share. Why, despite their massive
drawbacks, do automobiles remain the dominant
transportation mode?
There
are several reasons(1),
but to my mind one stands out: the vast disparity in
innovation between the automobile industry and the
mass transit industry. Automobile manufacturers
continually improve their products in the quest to
meet the needs of their customers. For the most
part, the mass transit sector does not. If we fail
to address this innovation gap, there is little chance
that we can budge people out of their cars in large
enough numbers to matter.
I
had a chance to view the innovation gap up close
Friday when Bud Buczkowski, director of electrical
systems engineering for Ford Motor Company,
addressed the Greater Richmond Technology Council.
The auto executive outlined how the venerable old auto company --
this year marks the 100th anniversary of the
introduction of the Model T --
continues to reinvent itself.
Perhaps
you saw the ad for Sync,
Ford's new voice-activated control for music and
cell phones, during the Super Bowl. Ford put the
Sync technology on display in Richmond, parking a
SUV and a smaller car outside the GRTC event.
People climbed into the front seats, issued orders to the
music players, and made calls without taking their
cell phones out of their pockets. The beauty of
Sync, Buczkowski explained, is that it allows
"hands-free, eyes-on-the-road" driving. No
more fumbling in your pockets for ringing cell
phones. No more thumb-punching phone numbers into
your wireless device. No more leaning over and
fiddling the MP3 player controls to change a tune.
Cynics
could argue, quite correctly, that this super-cool
technology does no more than solve a problem that
only automobiles create -- the temptation to
multitask while driving. "Hands-free,
eyes-on-the-road" technology is not a necessity
for riding the bus. But that would be missing the
larger point. Sync is just the beginning. It's the
first ripple in a tidal wave of innovation that will
change the way people interact with their
automobiles.
Younger
Americans, observed Buczkowski, are attached to
their personal devices -- laptops, cell phones,
BlackBerries, MP3 players and more. "People
have a lot of stuff, and they like to take it with
them," he said. "The new generation of car buyers is used
to being connected." Ford wants to help people stay connected. The company's goal, he explained, is
to make cars "our second home on wheels."
Think
of all the products that either have been introduced
in the past few years, or soon will be. Wireless
emergency-911 assistance is fast becoming
ubiquitous.
Real-time traffic data is becoming increasingly
available. (Virginia is part of a consortium
that will aggregate data from 750,000 road sensors
and GPS-equipped vehicles to track real-time traffic
flow in the Interstate 95 corridor.) More and more
cars come equipped with video display monitors and
GPS navigation systems. It won't be long before car
owners will be spitting out "vehicle health
reports" that tap into a dozen different
monitoring systems in their automobiles.
Digital
technologies normally associated with PCs and
consumer electronics are enabling a wide array of
new capabilities. Michigan residents are obsessed
with snow storms, Buczkowski noted. Want a weather report?
Watch a Doppler radar display on your car monitor.
Worried about traffic accidents tying the Interstate
in knots? Incident reports can pop up on your
monitor and provide the fastest-moving alternate route.
Running low on fuel? Download the locations of the
nearest gas stations -- along with the price they
charge for gasoline.
And
those are just the things that Buczkowski is willing
to talk about. There are other projects, he said,
that he won't disclose for competitive reasons. He
did acknowledge in response to a question that one
amazing scenario -- automated
driving... cars that drive themselves, like the ones
portrayed in the movie, "I Robot" --
actually could move from science fiction into
everyday reality.
The
challenge facing Ford, Buczkowski said, is meshing
the high-speed innovation cycle of consumer
electronics with the slower innovation cycle of the automobile
industry. How can the auto industry, which can take
two years or more to roll out a new model, introduce
new electronic products for its cars? Ford's
solution, he said, is to envision the automobile as
a software platform similar to a personal computer.
Just as you can update the applications on your PC,
so can you upgrade the software applications on your
automobile. If you want a new feature on your car,
you don't have to wait for a new model to come out.
Just wheel your car into the dealership and have a
technician download the software.
The
rate of innovation could well accelerate. Currently,
Ford is working in partnership with giant companies
like Microsoft and Sony. Buczkowski looks forward to
the day when the automaker can engage the services
of third-party software writers. There's no telling
what ideas they might come up with. As a member of the
GRTC audience marveled, "Remember the days when
you'd retrofit cars with new hub caps? Now
you'll retrofit them with new software."
Needless
to say, Ford is not the only auto company thinking
in these terms. Toyota, General Motors, Mercedes and
all the others are racing to harness the power of
on-board computers, video displays, GPS technology
and other digital technologies to the automobile.
One innovation will tumble after another as the
players in this globally competitive industry seek
to gain a fleeting advantage over the others.
Now,
compare the pace of innovation in the auto industry
with the rate of change in other transportation modes.
Other than the advertisements spray painted on the
sides, how different are the transit buses of 2007
from those of 1967? Functionally, have they improved
at all? I'm not a big bus rider, but I don't see
much difference.
I
can't discern much sign of innovation in the mass
transit sector, and for several reasons I expect to
see little in the future. For one, bus and heavy rail
operators don't conduct any R&D themselves. They rely exclusively upon outside
companies to introduce new ideas. Thanks to
those outside suppliers, some new technology does
leak into the marketplace: For instance, GPS
transponders can provide the exact location of buses
and keep passengers at bus stops informed about when the bus will
arrive. Another advance: Signaling technologies can
regulate the sequencing of stoplights so that buses
can move in expedited fashion along its route.
But
how widely and aggressively has anyone moved to
embrace these new tools? The rate of innovation,
from my vantage point, appears to be much slower
than in the auto industry. Government transit
operations simply are not geared to handle change.
As monopolies, they are more focused on internal
constituencies and less on their customers.
Dependent upon subsidies for operational
improvements and capital investments, they are
subject to the whims and vagaries of politicians. Even
the most dynamic transit leaders often find
themselves hamstrung in their efforts to implement
change.
Take
the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority, which
operates Washington-area buses and heavy rail, as an
example. The
quasi-governmental authority is an operational
disaster, plagued by poor service and periodic
disruptions by transit unions. Its governing board
must balance the political interests of two states,
the District of Columbia and a multitude of
municipalities.
Worst of all, the authority is dependent upon
contributions from numerous state and local
authorities for operational funding and capital
investment. That dependency, aggravated by endemic
inefficiencies, manifests itself in billions of dollars
in deferred maintenance. MWATA lacks the financial
wherewithal to maintain current levels of service
much less to upgrade its system with expensive new
technologies -- regardless of how much they might
improve productivity or build ridership over the long run.
Other
municipal transit operations suffer from many of the
same problems, just on a smaller scale. Governance
structures delay decision making, financial
inflexibility inhibits investment in innovation, and
insulation from competitive forces creates
organizational cultures with little motivation to
change.
It remains an utter mystery to me why buses
and rail cars don't all come equipped with Internet
connectivity and electric sockets to plug in
laptops. Think what a competitive advantage mass
transit would enjoy if people could work on the way
to work!
But
we don't see these things, or any prospect of them.
If innovation in consumer electronics is in the fast
lane and innovation in the automobile sector is in
the slow lane, innovation in mass transit is
creeping along the shoulder of the highway with a
blown out tire.
The
innovation gap does not change the fact that gas
prices are destined to increase, that road
congestion will only get worse, or that another
1,000 Virginians will die this year in traffic
accidents -- a number that, had it been Virginians
who'd died in Iraq, would have sparked a political
upheaval. The gap
does not change the fact that autocentric human
settlement patterns dedicate massive amounts of
acreage for roads, driveways and parking spaces, and
burden state and municipal governments with massive
infrastructure obligations. The innovation gap does
not change the fact that our autocentric society is
financially unaffordable and environmentally
unsustainable.
Even
so,
the gap persists. People will not abandon their
cars for buses, light rail and subway lines in
meaningful numbers until the U.S. mass transit
sector can create a
culture of innovation.
Unavoidably, creating a culture of innovation will require transforming
mass transit companies from monopolies into
competitive enterprises, from wards of the state
into businesses that can raise capital in public
markets, from internal-focused entities into
market-driven dynamos.
Restructuring
the ownership and organization of mass transit will not, by itself, make
the sector competitive
with automobiles. Another precondition is
instituting sweeping changes to human settlement
patterns. But painful restructuring -- root-canal
painful -- is a necessity.
Until we take the boots off the industry's wheels,
the locks off its steering column and the kill
switches off its ignitions, mass transit will never
get moving.
--
February 11, 2008
End
Notes
(1).
See E M Risse's essay in the current edition of the Bacon's
Rebellion e-zine, "What
Is the Problem with Cars?" for a detailed
treatment of this topic. Risse explores three major
reasons why cars remain the dominant transportation
mode in the United States. First, human settlement
patterns have become increasingly scattered,
disconnected and low density, rendering it
impossible to provide mobility through any mode but
the automobile (or, as he calls them, autonomobiles).
Second, the automobile industry and allied
industries promote cars and automobility through
massive advertising and manipulation of public
opinion. Third, mainstream media, which are
dependent upon automobility-related advertising,
have failed utterly to exercise a countervailing
influence.
This
column does not take issue with Risse, but rather
expands upon his argument. A fourth crucial reason
why automobility remains dominant is the structure
of the automobile and mass transit industries. The
auto industry is highly competitive and continually
introduces innovations into the marketplace; the
mass transit industry, dominated by government-owned
or quasi-governmental monopolies, stifles innovation.
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