America, the heartland of a car-based culture once famously termed ‘Autopia’ where people are driving less. Their love for car is fading. Thanks for oil price rise.
In Riverside, bus travel is up 12 per cent on a year ago, rising to 40 per cent on commuter routes. Use of the town’s railway link is up eight per cent. A local car pooling system is up 40 per cent. It is the same in the rest of the US. In South Florida a light rail system has reported a 28 per cent jump in passengers. In Philadelphia one has shown an 11 per cent rise. Even nationwide scooter sales have shot up. At the same time car sales are hitting 15-year record lows. Last week major American car-makers reported a devastating 18 per cent drop in car sales. The numbers point to a more fundamental shift. In America car sales carry a symbolic value that transcends the wheeler-dealering of the showroom. This is a nation of fabled road trips and Route 66. ‘There is an American dream of mobility and freedom and wealth. The car is part of all that,’ said Professor Michael Dear, an urban studies expert at the University of Southern California.
In the 1950s the confident nation that helped win the Second World War was expressed in classic car designs of huge fins and open tops. By the 1990s it had become the Hummer, a huge bulking car born from the military. Now there is to be another shift. For, hidden within the car sales figures, is a more complex story than a simple fall. Sales of big cars are plummeting while smaller vehicles, especially fuel-efficient hybrids, are replacing them. GM has now closed SUV production at four plants. Its Hummer brand is up for sale, or might even be closed. GM is ploughing huge resources into its 2010 launch of the Chevy Volt, a hybrid car that may get up to 150 miles a gallon. It needs to. GM’s share price recently hit a 54-year low, prompting one top investment bank to warn that the firm could go bankrupt.
The Volt, and cars like it, could become symbols of a new more conservation-minded car age. As Americans enjoyed the 4 July holiday weekend, increasing numbers of them were staying at home rather than hitting the road. Newspapers were full of tips for ‘stay-cations’, not weekend breaks away. Customs once scorned, such as car pooling and cutting out trips to the mall, are now commonplace. The fact is, the vast majority of Americans cannot give up their cars altogether. Too many cities lack any reliable public transport.
But America’s changing relationship with the car is just part of the story of how the most powerful nation is changing in the face of the oil price rise. America has been built on an oil-based economy, from its office workers in the suburbs to its farmers in the fields. Since the 1950s and the building of the pioneering car-orientated suburb of Levittown in Long Island, the American city has been designed for the convenience of the car as much as its human inhabitants. People live miles away from jobs, shops or entertainment. If you take away cars, the entire suburban way of life collapses. To some, that development is long overdue.
‘Suburbia has been unsustainable since its creation,’ said Chris Fauchere, a Denver-based film-maker who is producing a new documentary on the issue called The Great Squeeze. ‘It was created around cheap oil. People thought it would flow easily from the earth forever.’ The car, the freeway system and cheap air travel made America smaller. Everywhere was easily accessible. That, too, is ending. Higher fuel prices have dealt a terrible blow to America’s airlines. They are slashing flights, raising costs and abandoning routes. Some small cities are now losing their air connections.
In effect, America is becoming larger again. That will lead to a more localised economy. To many environmentalists that is a blessing, not a curse. They point out that cheap fuel for industrial transport has meant the average packaged salad has travelled 1,500 miles before it gets to a supermarket shelf. ‘Distance is now an enemy,’ said Professor Bill McKibben, author of the 1989 climate-change classic The End of Nature. ‘There’s no question that the days of thoughtless driving are done.’ Even farmers are not immune. They might not need a car to get to their fields but their fertilisers use oil-based products whose prices have gone through the roof. A handful have started using horses again for some tasks, saving petrol on farm vehicles.
Even as America’s obsession with the car lifestyle is ending, others are embracing it. ‘The Chinese have spent the Bush years starting to build their own version of America. A key question for the planet is whether they still have time to build a version of Europe instead – global warming will probably hinge on the answer to that question,’ McKibben said.
– from www.guardian.co.uk