Downsizing The Road Many of the oldest, least expensive gas-guzzlers may end up parked with those families who can least afford to feed them. Perney expects used SUVs to move well down the income scale: “Historically poor folks have big old cars because they depreciate fast, yet they are tough enough to keep on going. Keeping them running is actually cheaper for everything other than fuel and oil, because they’re rugged and generally understressed mechanically. The luxury doo-dads and electronic gizmos are expensive to repair, but you can usually get by without them.” If the more fuel-efficient vehicles end up with the least affordable price tags on used-car lots, cash-strapped buyers may end up stuck with big, cheap trucks or SUVs. The question of how to keep them running will have to be left for another day. Taking back the streets In dealing with the aftermath of the SUV boom and bust, some creativity is needed. Maybe a worthwhile complement to the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve would be a Strategic Light Truck Reserve. All of those orphaned SUVs and macho pickups could be rounded up, mothballed, and designated a public resource. Then over the coming decades, they could be doled out a few at a time to communities, to be shared by all residents for necessary hauling, towing, and traveling in larger groups. Because most people need the greater capacity of SUVs and pickups only rarely, such vehicles would seem to be ideal candidates for joint-ownership or sharing arrangements. Tracey Axelsson is executive director of the non-profit Cooperative Auto Network (CAN) in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is the oldest car-sharing co-op in the English-speaking world. By offering pickup trucks in its fleet, CAN manages to fill members’ occasional hauling needs while helping reduce the number of large vehicles on the road. Axelsson
hopes “that the old adage is changing – that ‘The only thing better than owning a truck is having a friend that does’ will become ‘The only thing better than sharing a truck is spending the money you save from not owning one’.” But, she adds, CAN is part of a coalition of similar groups struggling to develop a general code of ethics for car sharing. Otherwise, she says, such systems “can fall into the standard drama of providing just another disposable automobile or actually add to the number of cars in a person’s toy box.” In the summer 2008 issue of the green journal Synthesis/Regeneration, editor Don Fitz laid out a plan for radically reducing the numbers of personal vehicles on the road through combinations of living rearrangements, incentives, and disincentives. Some of his recommendations: Cut the workweek to 32 hours or much less, ensure that getting to work is quicker without a car than with one, move jobs closer to residences, and start making it harder to drive by eliminating more parking spaces every year. (The Utah state government recently went to an energy-saving 4-day work week, but without decreasing work hours.) Fitz emphasized, “Increasing trains and buses could be deep green transportation – but if and only if it is part of an actual decrease in the number of automobiles. Likewise, increasing bicycles, scooters, car-pooling and car-sharing is truly green transportation only if it is a piece of the big picture of reducing cars.” America’s vehicle population will eventually shrink, whether it’s through choice or necessity. This twilight of the SUV era seems an appropriate occasion to open up a broad debate on our whole concept of personal transportation. CT
If the more fuelefficient vehicles end up with the least affordable price tags on used-car lots, cash-strapped buyers may end up stuck with big, cheap trucks or SUVs. The question of how to keep them running will have to be left for another day.
Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina, Kansas and author of Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine (Pluto Press, 2008) August 2008 | TheReader 17