The Big Three Automakers are in trouble and want taxpayer help. We've heard this song before from industry. How do they get themselves into this mess? Could it be because the unions are so all powerful and greedy, the poor managers have no choice but to make cars no one wants? Could it be something else?
Clearly something needs to be done. Pigworld has the answers. If the auto industry wants money, here's the Three things they need to do first:
1) The CEOs and the board of directors must resign at once, receiving zero compensation for bungling and mismanagement. They will be replaced with engineers and designers, that is, people more interested in actually making a car, instead of personal fortune. The actual running of the business will be held in a trusteeship until the industry is back on its feet again.
2) The automakers will now be making cars that actually make sense given the energy problems facing the country and the world. Most cars are built more powerful than they need to be. Traffic problems already reduce the speed of cars to crawl, so why is the engine able to (in theory) reach 120mph? There is absolutely nowhere in the country where driving 120 mph is legal. Ergo, cars don't need that big massive engine. Cars can be lighter, slower, and designed for their most common use: short trips to the grocery store. As such, electric cars not only make more sense, they are ideal. There are design flaws within them that need to be over come. For ambulances, buses, trucks and light trucks the use of hydrogen peroxide fuel becomes a viable solution. (Hydrogen peroxide engines have been in existence since the 1930s. Odd hardly anyone ever mentions them). The idea is ween ourselves off gasoline completely as fast as possible. This in turn will create more jobs as more ideas and possiblities come to light.
3) The interstate highway system was built with taxpayer money to help the auto industry. It can now be used to start setting up bullet train connections to cities. The use of the auto factories to make cars can easily be converted to making more public transit. Highways will be used mostly by trucks hauling goods. People will have to get used to taking the train, but there is no reason train travel must be horrible. Comfort and speed will the hallmarks of the bullet trains. The poorly run airline industry will also aid the the creation of the bullet trains.
And with those three things in place, Detroit can have money! The only people losing their jobs are the top level fatheads, everyone else is fine.
Of course, this also means a rethinking of the car for the American people. The concept of going from Zero to Sixty is laughable anyway. Zoom Zoom is childish, and should be treated as such. Your car is not a sex symbol, a measure of manhood or luxury on wheels. It's a car. It's for hauling groceries, going to the school play, giving grandma a lift. It's not a "way of life."
That may be a harder sell than the reworking the industy, but people need to spend more time out of their cars. Public transit systems, bullet trains, and other modes of transport will have to shown as better than cars on an individual basis as well as an economic and environmental benefit. Biking to work should be common. If this means suburbs will suffer and fade away, so be it. Living together, working together, and being together is what democracy is all about.
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I'm on board for most of it.
Sensible public transportation out in the suburbs should be possible; not all of us want to be rats in an urban maze. Many of us only have rare occasion to set foot in a major city, and don't have to do so for work matters. When I do go into Philadelphia (fairly near here) I always use the train because with a handful of exceptions only a lunatic or masochist operates a private car within the boundaries of a city worthy of the term. Not needing a car is one of the top reasons why someone would agree to live in such a place.
SEPTA works very well for us in getting into and out of Philadelphia. I realize your focus on the trains was as a substitute for interstate travel, but that'll still require the back-up by other mass transportation initiatives elsewhere in the state. Stepping back, though, and I definitely agree that in supporting the auto industry (and the highway industry that arose from it) we've let crucial rail routes rot.
However, try to force those of us out in the suburbs to come share city life and there will be plenty of talk of bullets but it won't have anything to do with trains. If the city model proves a sufficiently strong and positive one it will eventually swallow us anyway as they spread until they merge.
What we need out here is a higher concentration of buses on the routes so that we can have a more reasonable reach and schedule, along with much better information access on how often and where they run. For a system that's perpetually hanging on by its fingernails (in terms of budget) they have an almost amazingly clannish attitude and level of weariness at any questions concerning how things operate.
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