This is the most exciting time to be in the transportation business, I know since I started in 1985 but maybe even since the invention of the rail car.
When I first had the idea to start my own consulting practice, I knew I wanted to work in three distinct areas: transportation, environment, and energy. Since I first had this thought in February, I can drop the “distinct” and see an amazing synergy materializing between the three areas. Never in my memory have more people been talking about these three issues, and acknowledging their dependence on one another. Energy with less of an environmental impact is needed in order to power vehicles to allow people to travel. What a concept. Who’d have thought that $4.00 gas would have been the tipping point?
Is the Transportation Demand Management industry participating in this minor miracle of mobility, or is it purely market forces at work? Are we facilitating change, or simply accommodating it? How do we create programs that justify continued funding when folks are flocking to full train station parking lots and forming their own carpools in droves at work, without outside help? What a tremendous opportunity to achieve what we had hoped for decades—liberal use of public transportation, awareness of the cost (and in many cases, the environmental impact) of each vehicle trip, and public sentiment leaning toward long term solutions? Do I dare say a decrease in traffic congestion, too?
Probably the best long-term solution I have heard was presented by Tom Friedman in his May 28, 2008 Opinion Piece in the New York Times titled “Truth or Consequences.” Friedman creates a mythical presidential candidate who would support energy economist Phillip Verleger Jr.’s “price floor” of $4.00 a gallon for gasoline. The price would never fall below this point; if it did, the federal gas tax would rise to make up the difference. Accommodations would be made to ease the burden on lower-income households, car manufacturers would have to consider this new reality in planning their future inventory, and families would have to decide how badly they needed that extra row of seats in the back of the minivan if they knew for sure that the price of gasoline would never fall below $4.00.
What would have to happen to elect such a candidate and give them the support of Congress to make such an idea a reality? How could the transportation, environmental, and energy advocates help make this happen? This is our once in a lifetime opportunity for change. How cool to be a part of this.
