Transit Blog wants to ditch cars like Japan; ignores our lack of Bullet Trains

Cars not cool, Too Expensive source Seattle Transit Blog
The US will spend $440 billion on gas this year, $1,465 per person, and more than $2,100 per driver. With gas prices at more than $3.28 on average nationwide, the New York Times is demanding stricter fuel standards again, just four months after they were tightened for the first time in 30 years. It's kind of obvious the changes were too little, too late and won't make much of a difference. The Times also seems to call for a higher gas tax, seeing as we pay so little relative to the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, in Japan, the youth there aren't even interested in cars. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Unlike their parents' generation, which viewed cars as the passport to freedom and higher social status, the Internet-connected Japanese youths today look to cars with indifference, according to market research by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association and Nissan. Having grown up with the Internet, they no longer depend on a car for shopping, entertainment and socializing and prefer to spend their money in other ways.

A survey last year of 1,700 Japanese in their 20s and 30s by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's biggest business newspaper, discovered that only 25% of Japanese men in their 20s wanted a car, down from 48% in 2000. The manufacturers' association found that men 29 years old and younger made up 11% of Japanese drivers in 2005, roughly half the size of that group in 1993.

The streets of Harajuku are filled with consumers like 20-year-old Kazuto Matsui. "Young people can borrow their parents' car, and I think they'd rather spend money on PCs or iPods than cars," says the student with shaggy hair who is in no rush to get a driver's license. While Mr. Matsui says he may want a car some day, "trains will do" for now.

Too bad we don't have trains yet, many people my age (mid-twenties) that I talked to are interested in ditching their cars but don't really have a choice sometimes. What would be interesting to see, is that now as teens are waiting longer to drive, whether in 10 years, when those kids are in their mid-to-late-twenties, they'll drive less than my generation. I bet they will, and with more efficient cars, the state might get to greenhouse gas goals without unpopular driver-limit mechanisms.

Reader tells them to "Get Real!"

Brian in Seattle said...

If I lived in Japan or Europe, I wouldn't have a car either or want one. Unfortnately, we dont have high speed trains here that beat driving from point A to point B and much of the US is not even served by a single passenger train let alone a half decent mass transit service unless you are living in a major city.



Also if you want to get out into the wilderness at all, you need a car/truck to get there. Even if I did all of my daily work commuting by bus/mass transit of some sort, I would still keep my car for weekend road trips.

March 26, 2008 12:07 PM

New York Times Editorial demands higher fuel standards

This is an editorial from the New York Times demanding stricter fuel standards

Pain at the Pump and Beyond

The surge in the price of energy couldn’t come at a worse time. The average price nationally of regular gasoline has shot up to a record $3.28 a gallon. Combine that with the collapse of the housing market and the seizing financial sector, and it is putting a boot to the gut of an economy that is either already in a recession or close to one.

The Bush administration can’t be entirely blamed for the pain at the gas pump. But its shortsighted energy policies — zealously focused on increasing the energy supply, with little attention paid to conservation and greater fuel-efficiency — means the country is far too dependent on oil that is both ruinously expensive and ruinous for the environment.

There are several reasons for oil’s dizzying price spiral. Soaring demand in fast-growing developing countries like China and India means there is little oil to spare. The turmoil in financial markets — the White House can take a good chunk of the blame for that — has driven prices even higher, as investors have bought oil and other commodities as stocks and the dollar plunge.

Meanwhile, President Bush’s strategy for ensuring that the nation’s energy security is focused on one thing: getting more oil by drilling in the Arctic and sending Vice President Dick Cheney to ask his Saudi friends to pump more. Neither could ever produce enough.

Not everyone is unhappy with oil at $100-plus a barrel. Authoritarian governments in Iran, Venezuela, Sudan and Russia are pocketing the profits and enjoying the political impunity that comes with such riches.

At home, the news is bad and getting worse. Consumer prices rose more than 4 percent in the past year, largely because of rising energy costs. Americans have started to reduce spending on other consumer goods, which is weakening the economy. The risk of inflation leaves the Federal Reserve with less room to maneuver.

If any good can come out of this mess, it would be an understanding — by corporations, consumers and government — that the era of cheap oil is truly over. With that, the country could finally focus on developing clean alternative energy sources and reducing oil consumption, a strategy that has served other countries well.

Take cars. Until last December, Republican and Democratic administrations had refused to raise fuel-efficiency standards for 30 years. And raising the puny gasoline tax remains a political nonstarter. By contrast, in Britain, gas at the pump costs around $7.70 a gallon, of which about $4.90 are taxes. In France, taxes account for about $4.60 of the retail price of $7.50 a gallon. Unsurprisingly, their cars get much better gas mileage than the guzzlers still popular in the United States.

Higher taxes on energy mean other rich countries are more energy-efficient across the board. The average German or Japanese uses little more than half the energy consumed by an average American. In Germany and Japan, per-capita emissions of carbon dioxide spewed by cars, power plants and other sources of energy are half those in the United States. In France, they are a third.

Americans are beginning to curb consumption. Gasoline demand declined in the first 11 weeks of the year for the first time since 1997. But it is far too little, and government policy is lagging far behind the problem.

The landmark energy bill passed in December tightened fuel standards for the first time since 1975 — demanding a 40 percent increase in cars’ and light trucks’ average fuel-efficiency by 2020. Still, the Department of Energy estimates that by 2022, the new standards would have reduced gasoline consumption by about only two million barrels a day, which amounts to a 17 percent cut in projected gasoline consumption.

A lot more needs to be done to prepare the American economy for a world of scarcer, more expensive energy. To start, the nation has to replace the oilmen in the White House with leaders who have a better grasp of the economics of energy and the interests of all Americans.