Tomorrow I take my first law school exam. Yay. In other news, I am very pleased with what Obama had to say about the automobile industry. He was tough on ‘government oversight,’ and clear about protecting the people (we’re largely less well off these days if you haven’t noticed.)

I like the way he speaks (except for the clearly affected dropped g’s (who’d of thunk?) For instance, he used the term ‘fleet’ while discussing the American automobile industry. Fleet is a technical, if somewhat militaristic term. Talk to any transportation buff and you’ll soon end up in a discussion about the fleet. Fleet is rolling stock, ‘rolling’ of course in a very Ike & Tina style. The kicker is that America is far behind at this level.

Example: While I was in the Peace Corps in Romania, CFR (the Romanian national railroad,) greatly expanded its offerings of IC level trains. IC is a European train standard for longer distance express trains (both domestic and international,) which mandates certain levels of service. Many Western countries have express interstate systems (more or less,) through their high speed rail-lines. Romania was not yet there but it was getting massive new tracking, electrical infrastructure and trainsets.

Fast forward two years to a trip from New York to New Orleans by rail. The only upgrade from cattle car coach is overnight accommodation. Unless you get a full size bedroom (which runs in the hundreds,) you get a ‘roomette.’ … Pause… time out… since when was it fashionable to brand anything with the suffix ‘ette’ ? That’s right, maybe the early to mid 1970’s, right when most of passenger rail was jettisoned by the freight carriers into an agency run by an inherently hostile governmental regime. The result was, now with apparent parallel in Detroit, lack of innovation; grudging governmental management sold with a side of diminishing returns. The American fleet is out of date. Remember how the Enterprise would sometimes come upon far more primitive species and its ships?

Since Obama is wise, he articulates that our national concept of our fleet must range beyond our military apparatus. While military driven hardware is an important segment of our fleet that generates great (and frightening) technologies, it can not be nurtured at the cost of the rest of the fleet.

3 Basic Components:

Rail – Huge re-conceptualization of the role of modern rail networks in our urban and inter-urban infrastructure. Major city pairs need new tracks, for both freight and passenger. Don’t forget: the freight railroads dumped passenger service, it was not profitable! They are separate businesses and with some major outlays they can be separately tracked. A dedicated passenger network, perhaps funded by freight taxes, would be tremendously beneficial. First, massive heavy labor public works. Creating major electrified railroads is an extremely labor intensive endeavor. The system will be a stimulus to alternative energy, perhaps through a mandate to meet X% of the system’s energy needs through region-appropriate renewables. Second, it would encourage widespread use of transportation systems that are much kinder to their surroundings. Major ancillary and wide reaching businesses implications.

Road – The Eisenhower Interstate System was a bold and not entirely unsuccessful project. I highly admire some of our major pre-interstate highways (such as Moses’ feeder Parkways in New York and Connecticut.) They were bold and radical by betting on our adoption of the automobile. Some interstates are also very important, especially for large states and regions with scattered urban and rural population centers. However, all this connectivity has its downsides; sprawl has ruined much of the interstate experience. Interstates are not kind to local enterprise, especially in urban cores. While highways were sold as great connectors, they instead became great dividers… observe the relationship between highways and public housing projects. They decreased the quality of the urban experience thereby fostering the increasing ghettoization of American urban cores.

The suburb was triumphal piece of propaganda that spoke to a real need. The problem was that it just kept going; there was no master plan, so things just sprawled. We now face an interesting demographic shift. Urban, somewhat more collective an efficient living will command a premium. Some cities will shape a nice mix: Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Boston. Others, such as New Orleans and Las Vegas, may end up as a kind of Terry Gilliam / Mike Davis hybrid city of the future. My observation, (which I stated earlier in response to a Newsweek column dedicated to the indulgences of the nouveau-billionaire class,) is that extreme bifurcation is detrimental to any system. Though I have never been to Vegas and I have only lived in New Orleans for six months, I imagine that they might be somewhat similar in terms of fate if not character. In both, tourism is a primary engine of the economy; tourism, however, is a notoriously poor contributor to civic vitality. These cities often have grand urban cores, or at least some stately areas. These areas are often developed as privately run high security havens for the super-rich. This militarization of public space eschews a human scale and thus discourages civic interaction (just take a look at ‘brutalist’ style concrete plazas and terraces from buildings of the 1960s.) This bifurcation between indulgent fantasy and grinding poverty is an illness, and particularly un-American.

Wow, that was tangential, got to remind myself not to do that tomorrow! The point I was getting at is that road and rail are both integral to our infrastructure but must re-negotiate some precious spaces.

Fleet – So let’s have at it! Develop an electric automobile fleet with battery changing stations and strive to improve that battery technology exponentially. Lay new track and develop new rail systems which help lessen our over-dependence on the car and cheap air. And, yes, let’s still build the best damn commercial airliners. We must and can be competitive on all three fronts, but it’s going to take some pretty radical restructuring, especially for all you former Reagan Democrats. If done well, this basic stimulus will do much to improve both our operating efficiency and quality of life.