USA TODAY (Magazine)
Sept. 1989, pp. 23-26

Reprinted from USA TODAY MAGAZINE, September 1989.
Copyright 1989 by the Society for the Advancement of Education.

RETHINKING THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL TRANSPORTATION
by Michael Renner

"...It is time to build a bridge from an auto-centered society into an alternative transportation future in which cars, buses, rail systems, bicycles, and walking complement each other."

     The mobility, convenience, and status bestowed by the private passenger car hold a seemingly unbeatable allure. Over 125,000 cars roll off the assembly lines each working day, and about 400,000,000 vehicles clog the world's streets. However, the car's utility contrasts sharply with the costs and burdens society must shoulder to provide an automobile-centered transportation system. Since the days of Henry Ford, a steady stream of laws have been enacted to protect drivers from each other and themselves, as well as to protect the general public from the unintended effects of massive automobile use. Legislators have struggled over the competing goals of unlimited mobility and the individual's right to be free of the noise, pollution, and physical dangers the automobile often brings.

     Prior to the 1970's, the auto's utility and assured role in society rarely were questioned. Even worries about escalating gas prices and future fuel availability subsided in the 1980's almost as quickly as they had emerged.

     The United States dominated the early stages of the automotive age. Only during the 1960's and 1970's did Western Europe and Japan begin to catch up. Until the 1970's, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe gave production of trains, trucks, and buses priority over automobiles. Then, in response to growing consumer pressure, passenger car production more than tripled to more than 27,000,000 vehicles. Long waiting lists indicate there is still enormous unmet demand, and access to car ownership remains regulated by bureaucratic allocation and heavy taxation.

     However, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts at the restructuring of the Soviet economy well may lead to a stronger emphasis on consumer goods, with the automobile near the top of the list. The Soviet Union is studying plans to double its car production of 1,400,000 vehicles per year. In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, an unresolved debt crisis may keep a lid on expansion of car ownership.

     The governments of many developing countries are also anxious to encourage the development of auto-centered transportation systems because they consider them an indispensable cornerstone of industrial development. While car ownership in the Third World has risen sharply, it is unlikely to reach the levels of industrial countries. Low per capita incomes put buying and maintaining a car beyond the reach of most people. The highly skewed wealth distribution patterns in most countries may foster a small, privileged class with ample purchasing power, but they effectively limit the number of potential car owners.

     Third World car ownership is concentrated mainly in the newly industrializing countries of Latin America and Southeast Asia and the major oil-exporting countries whose appetites for cars were whetted by soaring oil revenues and low gasoline retail prices in the 1970's. Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico account for almost half the cars in the developing world.

     The emergence of the debt crisis in 1982, coming on the heels of surging oil prices, shattered the auto industry's expectations that the bulk of future growth would occur in Latin America and compelled those nations to marshall their financial resources for debt servicing, precipitating major recessions. As soaring interest rates and falling real wages eroded buying power, car purchases in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico fell by 50% in the 1980's.

     Brazil and Mexico embraced automobile exports as an avenue to escape the debt morass. First encouraged in 1972 by generous government incentives to pay for ballooning oil imports, exports took a rising share of Brazil's car production and soared to 40% in 1987, when domestic demand collapsed. In Mexico, the share of production sold abroad has grown from less than five percent in 1982 to 48%. These two countries are joined by India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand in growing competition in the world export market.

     South Korea, by contrast, always has depended on sales overseas, which currently claim two-thirds of domestic production. While it is emerging as a serious challenger to Japan in the small-car market segment, automobile ownership at home-- currently one for every 65 people--has been hobbled by low wages and high taxes on purchases, registration, and gasoline.

     China and India account for 38% of the world's population, but own scarcely half of one percent of its automobiles. Until the late 1970's, they assigned cars one of the lowest development priorities. Both, however, have embarked on policies that seek to emulate the motorized transport systems of the industrial West and increase domestic car production dramatically.

     Nevertheless, production and ownership still are concentrated overwhelmingly in advanced industrial societies. They account for only 16% of the world's population, but 88% of the car production and 81% of the global fleet. By 1986, only a little more than one percent of the population in developing countries owned a car, compared with 40% in the Western industrial countries and a world average of about eight percent. Between 1970 and 1986, the U.S. alone added as many cars to its roads as the entire Third World now possesses.

     Searching for alternatives to oil

     Because cars run almost exclusively on petroleum-based fuels, the auto industry is understandably sensitive to changes in the price and availability of oil. Other sectors of the economy have reduced their reliance on petroleum, but no easy substitutes are available for automotive fuels. Thus, cars now account for a larger portion of oil demand than they did at the time of the first oil crisis in 1973. Since 1976, the U.S. has used more petroleum each year for transportation than it has produced.

     The oil crises of the 1970's reinforced the notion that a transport system centered on the private passenger car can impose tremendous costs on society, whether in the form of escalating fuel import bills or huge expenditures of capital and resources to tap domestic fuel sources. Higher prices made oil account for a rapidly growing share of the total imports of most countries.

     Brazil, by far the Third World's largest car market and oil importer, saw its fuel bill skyrocket from $280,000,000 in 1970 to $10,300,000,000 in 1980. Higher domestic oil production and a controversial program to generate ethanol fuel from sugar crops allowed the country to cut its reliance on imported oil by 60% between 1979 and 1986. However, providing the fuel from domestic sources carried a hefty price tag, requiring large-scale investment and government subsidies. The Brazilian government has spent an estimated $8,000,000,000 to prop up the country's ethanol industry alone. When international oil prices collapsed in 1986, subsidies grew to $2,000,000,000 from $650,000,000 in the preceding year.

     The dark clouds cast over the auto's future by the two oil shocks in the 1970's seemed to recede in the 1980's. Car sales quickly resumed growth as concern over oil prices and supplies faded from memory, and cheaper gasoline served as a catalyst for increased and faster driving. Unless car fuel efficiency is boosted further to offset these trends, gasoline consumption will continue to rise. Growing demand eventually will put increased pressure on production capacities.

     Warnings of a renewed oil crisis and concerns about the environmental effects of gasoline use have revived interest in alternative fuels. Attention currently centers on alcohol fuels (ethanol and methanol), natural gas, and, to a lesser degree, electricity. Alcohol fuels can be derived from agricultural waste and other biomass sources, while methanol also can be produced from natural gas and coal.

     Brazil's Proalcool program is regarded widely as the success story of the ethanol industry, despite the hefty government support required. Surgarcane-derived ethanol provided approximately half of the country's automotive fuel in 1986. The scope of Brazil's program, however, may not be replicable elsewhere because of insufficient crop surpluses, a lack of government commitment, or an automotive fleet that is simply too large. If corn were used as a feedstock, for example, almost 40% of the entire U.S. annual harvest would have to be earmarked for ethanol production to meet 10% of the nation's fuel demand.

     In most heavily auto-dependent countries, the production of alcohol fuels in large quantities would require large inputs of agricultural land. Thus, transportation fuel needs could come in conflict with food requirements, particularly if both keep growing. The drought that befell different parts of the world during the summer of 1988 demonstrates how quickly surpluses can be transformed into shortages. Another major drawback of all alcohol fuels is that 30-40% of the original energy content of their potential feedstocks (biomass, coal, and natural gas) is lost in the conversion process. Numerous studies suggest that the total amount of energy input to obtain ethanol--including energy required to fuel farmers' vehicles, produce fertilizer and pesticides, and ferment and purify the alcohol--may be close to or even surpass the eventual energy output.

     Using natural gas directly as an automotive fuel, either in compressed or liquefied form, appears more practical than tapping it as a feedstock for alcohol fuels because the original energy is lost in the conversion process. Today, more than 680,000 compressed natural gas vehicles are on the road worldwide, with a similar number expected over the next 10-15 years.

     In the more distant future, hydrogen may become a widely used fuel in either liquid or compressed gaseous form. Cost is still a major impediment to commercialization, and vehicle technology has not advanced yet beyond the prototype stage. Canada, Japan, and West Germany have made major commitments to promote hydrogen research and development, but it has yet to attract R&D funding in the U.S. commensurate with its enormous potential.

     Electric vehicles promise higher energy efficiency and quieter operation than conventional internal combustion engines. Barring major breakthroughs in battery technology and cost, however, they likely will be confined to market niches where performance and range criteria are less important than in the over-all passenger car market. Moreover, such vehicles can only be a viable alternative if the fuels used in electricity generation are renewable. Solar power, through the use of photovoltaic cells, is one candidate. Fuel cells--which convert the chemical energy in hydrogen, methanol, and natural gas directly into electrical energy without mechanical losses--could hold the key to making electric vehicles more acceptable some day.

     Alternative fuels have to overcome considerable odds if they are to make more than just a dent in the motor fuel market. The most daunting obstacle is a "chicken-and-egg" dilemma: an infrastructure--fuels, vehicles, and service stations--will not spring up unless there is adequate demand, while such demand is unlikely to materialize in the absence of an appropriate infrastructure.

     After the first oil crisis, car companies around the world took dramatic steps to boost fuel efficiency. New passenger cars in the U.S. are almost twice as efficient as the gas-guzzling behemoths of the early 1970's. However, traveling an average of 26 miles per gallon, they continue to trail their European and Japanese competitors, whose models achieve 30 MPG or more. Due to lower efficiency and more driving, the average North American car still burns up more than twice as much gas each year as its counterpart in Japan or Western Europe.

     Once the world passed the peak of the second oil crisis, fuel economy goals swiftly lost their urgency. Since 1983, gains in the U.S. and most other countries have fallen short of the impressive achievements between 1974 and 1982. Moreover, the growing popularity of light trucks in the U.S.--which are one-third less fuel-efficient than passenger cars--limits the potential for future efficiency gains. Improvements in Europe and Japan have been partly offset by consumers' growing preference for larger and more powerful vehicles.

     Enhancing fuel efficiency. Still, technical opportunities to improve efficiency are far from exhausted. Weight reduction and improvements in engine and transmission efficiency hold the greatest promise. In addition, aerodynamics, tire rolling resistance, energy dissipation of brakes, and energy consumption of accessories merit further improvement.

     On average, a 10% weight reduction will yield a six percent fuel economy gain. Improvements in the U.S. primarily have been accomplished through lowered weight and shifts to front-wheel drive. Further gains likely will result from greater substitution of lighter-weight materials for steel and cast-iron components. In order of their potential contribution to lighter cars, these include magnesium, plastics, aluminum, and high-strength low-alloy steel. They offer strength, heat and stress resistance, and design flexibility comparable to conventional materials.

     Due to low cost, plastics have exhibited the most dramatic growth of new automotive materials. In 1985, about 10% of the weight of cars manufactured in Japan, the U.S., and West Germany was accounted for by plastics; that share could grow to 18-20% by early next century.


     Reducing the weight of cars allows the use of smaller engines without having to sacrifice performance. Engine efficiency also can be improved by running the motor at more optimal loads, minimizing energy loss through exhaust gases, and improving fuel combustion. Reducing engine warm-up is another important goal since fuel efficiency can drop by half when an engine is cold.

     Advanced engine designs such as the adiabatic diesel (which minimizes heat loss) and the stratified charge engine (which features a "rich" air-to-fuel mixture surrounding the spark plug while maintaining an efficient and cleaner-burning over-all lean mixture) promise fuel economy improvements of 25-40%. Increases in the number of gears allow a motor to run at its most efficient speed. Continuously variable transmissions ( CVT's), which essentially give a car an unlimited number of gears, offer fuel savings of 20-24%, particularly in urban, stop-and-go driving.

     Energy losses due to braking and idling--which occur frequently during urban driving--can amount to as much as one- third of a vehicle's original kinetic energy. Energy storage systems, such as a flywheel device, together with a CVT, can alleviate this problem by capturing an engine's excess power whenever the driving requirements are less than its output. This power then can be tapped at some other time, thereby enabling smaller engines than in today's models.

     The prospects that innovations currently being tested in prototypes will be commercialized soon are not encouraging, however. Car companies around the world have responded to lower oil prices by slowing down their efforts to incorporate advanced fuel-economy technologies in mass-produced cars. Instead, consumers are offered styling changes and gadgetry. In fact, "muscle-cars"--featuring eight cylinders and high horsepower--are back in style.

     Left to their own devices, industry and consumers will enjoy the free ride afforded by low fuel prices and neglect fuel economy. Governments need to adopt new standards and taxes to boost fuel efficiency. Given the range of advanced technologies now installed in prototypes, on the shelf, or on a drawing board, striving for 50 MPG in new cars by the end of the century is a reasonable goal.

     Improving air quality

     The most alarming effect of mass motorization may not be the depletion of fossil fuels, but the large-scale damage to human health and the natural environment. Researchers at the University of California estimate that the use of gasoline and diesel fuel in the U.S. alone may cause up to 30,000 deaths every year. Moreover, the American Lung Association estimates that air pollution from motor vehicles, power plants, and industrial fuel combustion costs the United States $40,000,000,000 annually in health care and lost productivity.

     Worldwide, the production and use of automotive fuels account for an estimated 17% of all carbon dioxide (CO2) released from fossil fuels. Transportation is also the primary source of lead pollution. Perhaps more significant are the synergistic effects. The best-known and most pervasive of these is photochemical smog--the brown haze that causes health disorders, restricts visibility, erodes buildings and monuments, reduces crop yields, and is at least partly responsible for the massive forest damage afflicting central Europe. Athens, Budapest, Cairo, Mexico City, New Delhi, and Sao Paulo are among those cities with the most polluted air. In addition, nitrogen and sulfur oxides, together with unburnt hydrocarbons, are the principal components of the phenomenon commonly known as acid rain, which is destroying freshwater aquatic life and forests throughout central Europe and North America and degrading marine life in Atlantic coastal waters.

     The most serious long-term consequence of automotive emissions is the atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other "greenhouse" gases--nitrous oxide, methane, and ozone. There is now virtual consensus among scientists that, if the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere doubles from pre-industrial levels, a substantial increase in global temperature will occur. The impending climate change could shift global precipitation patterns, disrupt crop-growing regions, raise sea-levels, and threaten coastal cities worldwide with inundation.

     Since the early 1960's, the U.S. has set the pace in establishing and tightening emission limits and pioneering control devices. Japan, Australia, Canada, and South Korea have established emission standards equivalent to those in force in America, and Brazil has initiated a 10-year phase-in of regulations that, by 1997, will allow it to match current U.S. standards. Emissions in Argentina, India, and Mexico, on the other hand, still go virtually uncontrolled, and controls in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are limited to engine modifications.

     Within Western Europe, there is a widening gulf between the so-called Stockholm group and the European Economic Community (EEC). Austria, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland require installation of catalytic converters and compliance with emission levels comparable to those prevalent in the U.S. EEC standards establish separate categories for large, medium, and small vehicles, and those for small cars in particular remain very lenient, due to the opposition of the French and Italian car industries. Because some 60% of all cars on the road in Europe are in that category, little reduction in emissions can be expected. Europe also has been slow to control diesel pollutants, which pose even greater health risks than gasoline emissions.

     During the 1980's, progress has come to a virtual standstill, while emission levels remain unacceptably high. In many nations, these earlier gains are in danger of being wiped out by growing traffic and higher travel speeds. Tougher measures seem called for. U.S. EPA Administrator Lee Thomas has suggested that "the smog problem may well need to be dealt with by reducing the number of cars on the street, by telling people they can't drive nearly to the extent they have in the past." Indeed, in an effort to combat urban air pollution, Athens, Budapest, Florence, Milan, Rome, and Sao Paulo recently have imposed restraints of varying strictness on motorized traffic in their inner cities.

     The new age of transport

     The auto culture is ingrained so deeply in Western society that alternatives to it seem virtually unthinkable, but excessive reliance on cars actually can stifle, rather than advance, societies. The very success of mass motorization has created conditions that can not be ameliorated simply by making cars more efficient and less polluting.

     For example, the automobile exacts an enormous toll in human life. Despite safety improvements, an estimated 250,000 people die in traffic accidents around the world every year, with millions more suffering injuries of varying severity. Also, large stretches of land have been given over to the automobile and its infrastructure. Worldwide, at least one-third of an average city's land is devoted to roads, parking lots, and other elements of this infrastructure. In American cities, close to half the urban space goes to accommodate the automobile; in Los Angeles, the figure is two-thirds.

     Cars confer on their owners virtually boundless freedom as long as their numbers remain limited. However, instead of facilitating individual mobility, the proliferation of automobiles has bred a crisis of its own--congestion. The conventional approach to this problem has led to a vicious circle; building more roads simply attracts more cars, thus increasing the pressure for still more roads. Those cities most reliant on automobiles face virtual paralysis. In Denver, Houston, and Los Angeles, roughly 90% of people get to work by car; in the less auto-dependent cities like New York, cars still account for two-thirds of all work-related trips. By comparison, in Europe, where communities are less extensively suburbanized and average commuting distances are half those of North America, only about 40% of urban residents use their cars, while just 15% of the population drives to work in Tokyo. The result is that residents of the highly car-oriented American cities use twice as much gasoline per capita as Australians, four times as much as Europeans, and 10 times as much as Asians.

     Congestion is no longer an exclusively urban phenomenon. In the U.S., residential settlements and jobs increasingly are dispersed in sprawling suburbs. As a consequence, the number of commutes within central city areas has remained fairly stable since 1960, while the number of trips between central cities and suburbs and from suburb to suburb has doubled. When suburban communities are too scattered, public mass transit, biking, and walking are not feasible.

     With a short reprieve from higher oil prices, it is time to build a bridge from an auto-centered society into an alternative transportation future in which cars, buses, rail systems, bicycles, and walking complement each other. Mass transit systems offer a host of advantages over automobiles. When fully used, they are considerably more energy-efficient and less polluting. In addition, they reduce congestion--a car requires roughly nine times more road space per passenger than a bus.

     If properly planned, public transit networks can approximate the flexibility provided by private passenger cars. Synchronizing schedules, so that multi-destinational or grid systems allow convenient transfers between different transit lines, could enhance access throughout a metropolitan area and create a dense network of mass transit corridors that attracts more riders. The viability of public transit systems--particularly in suburban areas--can be enhanced by making them more accessible. Bike-and-ride stations and facilities to carry bicycles on buses and rail systems have proved enormously popular in Denmark, Japan, the Netherlands, and West Germany, but remain little used in the U.S.

     Reorientating transport priorities can be successful only if the symbiotic relationship between land use patterns and transportation networks is recognized. Public transit systems can facilitate and reinforce more compact land use, while land use patterns frequently determine transportation needs. Zoning ordinances can encourage a higher density of urban activity while slowing development at the urban perimeter. The more concentrated both population and jobs are, the shorter are travel distances, the more mass transit becomes viable, and the more walking and biking occurs. In short, more compact cities foster less individual motorized transport.

     Governments frequently assign priority to motorized travel in traffic planning, budget decisions, and allocation of street space, giving short shrift to pedestrians and traditional modes of transportation. Similarly, the World Bank has helped to slant transportation projects toward motorized solutions. Between 1972 and 1985, rail and bus systems received less than one-third of the funding for urban transportation projects. Government policies favoring private car ownership by a tiny elite are squandering scarce resources and distorting development priorities. Bringing in fuel, car components, or already assembled autos stretches import budgets thin, and building and maintaining an elaborate system of roads, highways, bridges, and tunnels devours enormous resources. To meet the mobility needs of the poor majority in the Third World, substantial improvements and expansion of public transport are required.

     Nonmotorized modes of transportation--rickshaws, bicycles, push-carts, and animal-drawn carts--that require little input of capital and energy can be an important complement to public transit. They are more affordable, mostly do not pollute, do not strain investment and import budgets, and generate a significant amount of employment. Bicycles--considered mainly a recreational device in the industrial West--are the predominant means of short-distance urban vehicular transportation in Asia, although they are far less common in parts of the Western Hemisphere and Africa.

     French philosopher Andre Gorz once remarked that "the automobile is the paradoxical example of a luxury object that has been devalued by its own spread. But this practical devaluation has not yet been followed by an ideological devaluation." The proliferation of automobiles has led to the multiple crises of air pollution, looming climate change, congestion, and oil depletion. The magnitude of these problems suggests the need for a fundamental reexamination of the automobile's role.

     The scope of the modern, auto-centered transportation system--from production and distribution to operation and repair--is so tremendous that fundamental change can not occur quickly. Therefore, a successful policy needs to encompass various layers, ranging from those that can take effect more immediately, such as making cars more efficient and less polluting and discouraging auto use where possible, to others that will need more time to make their impact felt, such as identifying and developing renewable, environmentally acceptable fuels and establishing efficient, flexible public mass transit systems.

     A more comprehensive transportation policy must recognize that transportation needs are not abstract. What people need is access to jobs, homes, and services. More compact and integrated communities can provide this without long commutes. If urban design--creating new communities as well as reshaping existing urban landscapes--can become an integral component of future transportation policies, the contrasting individual interests in mobility and societal interests in fuel supply security, environmental protection, and urban integrity may be reconciled.

     Mr. Renner is a senior researcher at Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C.