GMAC wants to become a bank ?!

So, let me get this straight - Ford Motor Credit, Chrysler Finance Corp., and GMAC have already been given access the Fed's commercial paper program and now they want to become banks in order to access federal government bank rescue funds because nobody in their right mind will lend to these auto related companies.

Let's think about this for a second. No-one wants to lend to auto finance companies because car prices and sales are falling rapidly, defaults are rising, and their business is dwindling away.

So because no-one in their right mind would invest in such companies, they cannot access credit. If they cannot access credit they cannot offer credit to car buyers. Doesn't sound like such a bad thing at all really. Do Americans really need to drive three trillion miles a year? And aren't Americans in too much debt anyway? Do most Americans really need to buy that new car right now? The consensus - even in the US itself, seems to be that it is time to ween ourselves off this addiction. More, it seems clear that feeding the addiction will only make the situation worse.

But the government is running scared. If they do fall prey to these threats, and step in to allow these particular companies to access the Fed's commercial paper program, indeed by allowing them to become banks (if they are in fact allowed to do so - I fail to believe that Congress could permit this), the government is effectively bailing out the investors and lenders who have enjoyed wonderful returns for the past or so decade. offering money to these companies so that these auto finance companies can continue to lend money to people with bad credit to buy new vehicles that will fall in value so that they can continue to satiate their addiction to automobile lifestyles - environment be damned, energy security be damned, everything else be damned.

Livable streets - a "how to"

Who hasn't been inspired by these roads with high canopies of tree cover? Cars need wide roads preferably open for visibility at high speed. Everyone else however, enjoys a good canopy cover. This provides fantastic protection from sun, wind and also light rain - not to mention inspiring awe and wonder. Narrower streets are best for good canopy cover.


It is surprisingly easy to make a regular road livable and friendly. A few nice big planter boxes in the middle of the road is all it takes. This road is still accessible by car - but no longer a through road. There is also a special access for emergency vehicles. All of a sudden the stinking noisy screeching dangerous inner city roadside becomes a peaceful oasis - it is itself a part of the park.



Bollards have the same effect. A few of these bollards are removable to allow emergency vehicle through access as necessary (but chained so they cannot be taken far). Locals quickly put them back in place to stop regular traffic (because they have come to value life without high speed through traffic - gasoline-powered, electric or otherwise).


And who said that all roads need to be wide enough for vehicles? Why not have some roads that are just tracks - short cuts wide enough for pedestrians and bicycles. Cars must go around. This encourages people to get out of their comfort zone (lazy zone?) and walk, jog or ride.

In the West, road builders assume that pedestrians are there simply for pleasure, and therefore tend not to make (non-motor) paths straight. Pedestrian-only streets should be reasonably direct particularly if in busy areas - but on side areas it is not impossible to play a little with the design.

Just think - in the West you can drive a car from your street across the entire country with barely a bump in the road. Imagine if there was a similar network of car-free streets where the entire design goal was the efficiency and convenience of non-vehicular traffic. Why is it that pedestrians must "cross" a street? If we thought about it a bit, it could quite conceivably be the other way around - where the pedestrian has a straight and flat, unbroken path which automobiles must "cross" (and wait to do so). Design can assist in facilitating this perception in many ways other than these above, just as it is used now in the West to create the perception that roads "belong" to automobiles. But a picture is worth a thousand words, so hopefully these pictures will give people an idea of the incredible "traffic-calming" potential of these design features.

Incidentally, all of these streets are in inner city Tokyo.

The price of our oil addiction

Deeply disturbing issues are explored mercilessly by Michael Watts in this beautifully written and thoughtful but starkly confronting piece on the CNN website - HERE.

I will not add any quotes because I think you should sit down for a minute or two and ponder all of what he has to say.

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words...

AMERICANS DROVE 1.4 BILLION MILES FEWER IN 08.04 than 07.04.

Sounds like a lot, huh? That is, until you see this graph...



and see just how bad things have become in just the past 25 years. I found this graph, created by the DOT Federal Highway Administration in a Treehugger article. Just in case you can't see the image so well, this graph tracks annual vehicle miles travelled in the USA, counted in the BILLIONS of miles, and shows the change in miles driven since 1983. Americans in 2007 drove some 3 trillion miles. OK, so it is a fairly steep dip right up there in the top right of the graph - that is promising. But if you look at where we are coming off from... WOW. This trend of the last few months might have to continue for 20 years or more before we come back to the levels we had then. Nevertheless, a return to the levels of even 2 or 3 years ago would probably indicate a fairly major shift in lifestyles and attitudes. There is an old saying in finance that "the trend is your friend, until the end." Well this may be the end of the trend that has been friendly to the US auto/sprawl related industry investor, and the beginnings of a new trend that is friendly to a new type of investor - the green investor, the new urban citizens and the farming community. Indeed, many an investor has already bet the farm that this will be the new trend for the forseeable future in the United States.

China, India, South America and Russia/Eastern Europe have become the new battleground - where the old forces of oil/auto/coal/sprawl/consumerism have already taken their investment dollars.

******************************************************************
Nov. 15, 2008 UPDATE - AUGUST DATA HERE
******************************************************************
This strong new trend in US driving (or lack of driving) patterns continues, despite falls in gasoline prices, with total miles driven in August 2008 now 15 billion miles lower than the same month in 2007. Cumulatively this year, Americans have driven over 67 BILLION miles less in 2008 than the same period of 2007. This is a reduction in driving the likes of which the USA has never seen before. Sounds like a lot huh... and yet... again... it is just a drop in the ocean when you look at this graph of what we have done to the country in recent decades. Attitudes towards driving are changing, and fast, but it will take more than this before any real progress is made.

This is why no amount of bailout money will save auto makers

-In late October 130 major European cities pledged to fight climate
change, and sounded out action ideas such as creating new
eco-quarters, developing new forms of mobility and limiting urban
sprawl.

www.euractiv.com/en/sustainability/major-eu-cities-pledge-fight-climate-change/article-176720


Simply reducing tailpipe emissions by switching to some other form of propulsion is not enough. If we are to really get sustainable we need better urban planning. And whether you want it or not, governments around the world are getting serious about it.

Are Aussies worse than Americans?

Australian government wasted no time bailing out their auto industry... this despite the fact that automobile manufacturers in Australia are essentially foreign owned and build for the most part gas guzzling monsters.

And yet, the government has its detractors on this policy and there are more than a few. Here is one scathing piece:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24643119-664,00.html

The author is right to attack a rediculous bail-out, but wrong to think that electric cars are the answer. I would wager that no new technology is going to fill the gap that is about to be rent open by Gen X and Y forsaking automobiles. Walkable built environments are the answer, not automobiles, electric or otherwise. GenX and GenY know it already, and the oldies are beginning to cotton on also despite having for generations seen car and suburban house as the God-given fruits of life in the New World, are getting the picture.

We don't need to spend money redesigning our cars - we need to spend money redesigning our ROADS so that we don't NEED cars so much.

Bush seeks redemption? ブッシュの罪滅ぼし

President Bush seems to have found religion and seeks redemption as he doggedly refuses to bail out automakers:

Detroit rescue may have to wait for Obama administration
Faced with hardening opposition from President George W. Bush and Republican members of Congress, Democratic leaders said it is unlikely that they would get a bailout for automakers passed in the upcoming lame-duck session. They are increasingly accepting the possibility that a rescue for the Detroit Three, along with economic-stimulus measures targeted to middle-class families and workers, would have to wait until the inauguration President-elect Barack Obama. The New York Times (13 Nov.)

Why is it that politicians seem do the right thing when they have nothing to lose?

...on the other hand, Obama has a lot to lose (political support from auto workers). He probably does not need their support really, but has the boy from Chicago already sold out? -

Obama wants $50 billion for automakers
Faced with warnings that General Motors is on the verge of bankruptcy -- a shock that would echo through the entire U.S. economy -- President-elect Barack Obama is asking Congress for $50 billion to rescue the auto industry. Obama's plan includes creation of a czar or supervisory board to oversee the rescue. To have any chance of passage, said people familiar with the matter, the measure would need the support of President George W. Bush, who has opposed the idea of giving government money to automakers Bloomberg (13 Nov.)

Sounds like a lot of empty threats to me. Hands up those who think that we would all be better off if one or two of the automakers just went under. Well what do you know, even some of the shareholders seem to think so:

Some say GM bankruptcy preferable to bailout: Some experts said a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by General Motors might be better for the company and the nation than a government bailout that is gaining support in Washington. They said the money might do nothing more than put off a transformation that GM must go through to become a profitable, competitive company again. One activist investor said he would rather see the money used to help GM workers and train them for new jobs. The New York Times (12 Nov.)

Well, heck - if even shareholders are saying that it should be allowed to go bankrupt, who are we to argue?

Let the company fail, and support the workers in retraining for new jobs. Now you're talking sense.

"No" to Bailout for Automakers

Reuters poll results on the question "Should the Government bail out US Automakers?"

Yes: 25%
No: 75%

http://polls.reuters.com/us/1225981225511

That's three to one. I dare the Democrats to try. They will regret it. But lets look at this level-headedly here -there is no reason to support an industry that has had plenty of opportunity to change since they saw the writing on the wall in the 70's but they didn't for one reason or other (selling cars and SUVs was making so much money!). Well now they are paying the price. And if people don't want as many cars anymore, there's no point paying the companies to keep making them just like they were 5 years ago. We must simply accept that there will be consolidation and pain in the industry and let's do what we can to help the workers find something else to do. And the sooner the better. Build trains. The Japanese do it. The French do it. The Chinese do it. Why can't Americans? Build roads and towns that are walkable and don't even need driving. Imagine if your 10yr old kids could walk or ride a bike to school without you having to worry for their life. Imagine if you could walk to schools, shops, pools, tennis, library, doctors etc without having to get in your car everytime. Instead of being wide, open high-speed rivers of steel, exposed to the elements, imagine if most roads in the city were narrow tree-lined lanes with a canopy of tree cover, to protect pedestrians from the wind, sun and all but the hardest rain.

Imagine...

GM's `Time Is Very Short' for U.S. Government Aid, Altman Says

This is not even a veiled threat. This guy is blatantly attempting to extort money from the US public - "give us money or we will cause untold economic pain".

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aSc56MIykTVk&refer=home

Well, Altman, would you like me to suggest where you stick your cars that nobody wants any more...?

Riches to Rags

Once champions of American style "free-market" economies - auto companies are now going begging. Well, I say let them beg, and go begging. Hell, if private equity won't touch them with a ten foot barge pole, they probably have a damn good reason - why the hell should the rest of us?!

Let em fry.

Listen to this quote from Reuters HERE

*****************

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, told reporters that quick loans were needed for the industry to get through the next six to 12 months.

"The bottom line is that all three automakers need some liquidity, some assistance with cash and they need it right now," Granholm said.

"The alternative is worse," Granholm said. "The alternative is the industry doesn't have access to funds and we lose a company or two. We don't want to do that."

*****************
Well DUH, if there are too many cars around, and too many car companies making things that nobody wants any more, then YEA OF COURSE you are going to lose a company or two. THAT IS THE FREE MARKET. Or don't you like the free market so much any more? Hmmm. Want us to prop up a company that makes things we don't want any more, just because it keeps people employed and the wheels of the economy turning? Now you are starting to sound like a cold-war socialist. Fat chance. Listen, either we have socialism where the people can share in the profits to society from advances in productivity, or we have capitalism where companies that don't make things people want are allowed to fail. Attempting to socialize the costs and privatize the profits is a recipe for a mighty angry citizenry.

AND YET MORE DAMNING EVIDENCE

Yet more evidence that air pollution from traffic (automobile traffic that is...) is damaging our health. Read the BBC report HERE.

"Air pollution from traffic hinders the heart's ability to conduct electrical signals, a study has suggested." and

The pollution levels in this study were not even that high yet they are still seeing changes

Professor David Newby, Edinburgh University

"Our advice to heart patients is to avoid prolonged exposure to high levels of air pollution." he says. Like where on earth can we get away from air pollution from automobiles? There isn't one decent sized city anywhere that has taken on the challenge of restricting automobiles.

Who is responsible ?

http://www.theage.com.au/national/commuter-train-kills-driver-in-level-crossing-smash-20081118-69bq.html

Car driver crashes through a boom gate, get's hit by train, and they blame it on the train? Strange place.

6 billion on this and what for rail? - a coal shipping line.

Tolls possible on new Melb ring road freeway
ABC Online - 1 hour ago
Part of the link between the Ring Road and the Eastern Freeway will be built underground. (ABC NEWS) The Victorian Government has confirmed it will spend $6 billion connecting Melbourne's Metropolitan Ring Road to the Eastern Freeway.
$6 billion road project will connect Melbourne Melbourne Herald Sun
Brumby's $40bn plan to get Victoria moving The Age
NEWS.com.au - The Age - Melbourne Herald Sun
all 26 news articles »

6.7M people presented to emergency wards in 06-07 in Australia

According to this ABC article, 6.7M people presented to emergency wards in 06-07 in Australia - equivalent to 1 in 3 Australians. Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon is quoted as saying that the Federal Government intends to make a big investment in improved services.

What is missing from this picture? I don't see either the ABC or the honourable Minister reflecting at all on WHY these people are in emergency rooms in the first place. If we want to reduce this state of emergency, then we need to change our very way of life. We don't need a war on terror, we need a WAR ON TRAFFIC.

Power Down

Fascinating, mind-numbing piece here in the Daily Reckoning, a quirky investment newsletter.

But wWow. I may have been criticizing it for years, but I never thought I would see American society forsake the "American Way of Life" so quickly, en mass. Talk about a "tipping point!"

Some quotes :

"High energy prices are undermining the American way of life itself, such as it is. As colleague Byron King explains, below, we've spent the last 100 years building the wrong kind of world. Now, many Americans are doomed to live in the ruins of a civilisation that no longer works."

"Like it or not, Americans are being forced to park their cars. This spring, they cut back on their driving at a sharper pace than anytime since 1942. But it's hard to stop driving when you live far from work and far from shops."

""Prices in outer suburbs will get clobbered," concludes economist Mark Zandi."

"And it will get worse before it gets better. To be perfectly blunt, it might not even get better. Over the next year, and into the foreseeable future, in the developed world people will go broke buying motor-fuel, heating oil and natural gas. (Wait until next winter... Sweet Jeeeezus!) In the less-developed world, people will go broke buying bread. And then the poorest amongst us will starve. Any way you look at it, it's bad for business.

"Fast-rising energy prices are decapitalizing entire nations. Energy prices are destroying wealth faster than people can re-create it. Entire segments of the world economy have hit the iceberg and are filling with cold seawater. Some industries are becoming obsolete in a matter of months. Much of the airline industry is drowning in red ink before our eyes - almost every flight in the sky is losing money, no matter how much they charge to check your suitcase or how few peanuts they put in the small package.

"And down on the ground, most motor transport is just plain uneconomic any more... 'Dead Rigs Driving.' Farewell to the 'Warehouse on Wheels.' Sic Semper Globalisation.

"Large swaths of the auto & truck building industry have become capital-wastelands. For example, GM is closing SUV factories and planning to ditch the Hummer brand. This cascades down to firms that make everything that goes into a set of gas-guzzling wheels. You name it: hot-coiled strip, axles & tires, wire bundles, paints & coatings, window glass and seatbelts, and so much more. Billions of dollars worth of past investment is just gone...bye-bye, poof! And the good-jobs-at- good-wages? History."

Chrysler is Going Down ?

Oh man. This is pretty impressive. Thanks to freep for this. Chrysler Chairman Bob Nardelli is quoted here as saying that this is "the lowest sales level in 16 years" and "indicates a significant and continued softening of the U.S. automotive market." No s##t Sherlock! And IRN Inc., ("The Source for Automotive and Industrial Intelligence") is quoted as saying that if the annualized rate of 12.5 million sales continues for long, it would be "Armageddon. Doomsday." Hyperbole to be sure, but a fundamental shift in attitudes is already running hot and the economy will follow - probably down for the time being as inventories run up of things people no longer want (cars) and industry frantically retools to provide the things that they do want - the tools and infrastructure of "New Urbanism" - so much more than just switching to selling hybrid or even electric cars, this is all about trains, transit, smaller more efficient homes in convenient, walkable towns that are safe and mostly free of speeding, stinking, dangerous vehicles and instead serviced by safe, efficient, cheap and convenient transit, where they can get to know the neighbors better because the kids play together in the park out the front where the highway used to be etc etc - what has been dubbed "New Urbanism" this newfound love of urbanity comes as much out of growing respect for the surrounding natural environment as it does out of desire for convenience and society.

As you may have noticed, I abhor car culture and everything it does to ruin our cities, communities and environment, and yet even still, I find this graph catching me quite shocked. Don't get me wrong. It is nothing to get too excited about yet. This isn't Armageddon or doomsday - hell, they are still selling over 10 MILLION NEW VEHICLES A YEAR and that's just in the USA, so Americans still have not yet kicked old habits of cars and sprawl, not by a long shot. But mark my words, attitudes are changing fast, and if this does continue it really will show that American society as a whole has finally woken up to the reality of the necessity for substantive change NOW to the way people's lifestyles there are designed.

It will be interesting to see if the Canadians and Australians (buoyed by mining) will follow suit. America could actually really get a leg up on other such new world countries by using the current crisis as the impetus to really rewire their cities for better efficiency PPS style, while these other countries power on with coal and oil, and sprawl and waste just because they can afford it...for now...

Yours Rambling,

New Urbanism

Found a very upbeat article "Suburbs a Mile Too Far for Some" in the WSJ discussing the promising future of "New Urbanism" in the United States, and how this process is already well underway. Three cheers for high gas prices. I find it fascinating that in the US the statement "I only fill a tank once a month" is still something to be wondered at. I cannot even remember the last time I filled a tank. I may have done it in 2007 for a rental car. Certainly not yet in 2008 (it is almost July now). I love reading these stories - and stories about trucking companies struggling to improve efficiency.

I wonder if the WSJ has been found PPS lately. It really is all about the streets and public places - not about the home castle. I've never felt all that cramped even living in a small Japanese shoebox - because my home is much more than the dwelling I live in, it is the town around me - the shops, restaurants, library, public hall, park, shrine, children's playground, coffee shop, university etc etc. My house is just a place to sleep and clean and get a bit of private time. Most of the real fun takes place outside - on the streets. But of course, you cannot have a chat with the neighbors while watching your children play soccer in the street if (like in the USA, Australia, Canada etc) your streets are sterile places reserved for speeding vehicles.

Eight reasons to rejoice at 8-dollars a gallon oil

This story from none other than the Wall Street Journal describes eight good reasons to be happy with high gasoline prices - the first of which is "we can say goodbye to the internal combustion engine", and number six is that it will be an "antidote to sprawl".

I am certainly very encouraged to see this kind of thinking in the Wall Street Journal, that bastion of the world of finance which until so recently supported everything automobile. It might be worth keeping these points in mind before pushing Governments for tax relief. Sure, there are plenty in finance who still do promote the automobile industry and culture - they just support it in China, India, Brazil, Russia and Eastern Europe now rather than in their own back yards. But America likes to throw its weight around, so once we have America convinced that auto-society is not the way to go, then I have a feeling we will be making some very good progress.

The "Auto Bubble"

This may well be a topic you will hear more about over the coming year or two. Investors are finally waking up to the fact that cars may have been a little oversold - on credit.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121124778122705883.html?mod=fpa_mostpop

The Dark Shadow Behind a Happy Story

This is quite a quaint little story about how a cat has saved the day for a local railway company in rural Japan. Behind this little story however is a dark picture of decades of pork-barrel roads spending and urban sprawl that has drawn people away from the trains and into cars. Stuck between this ruddy great four-lane rock and the hard place that is a rapidly ageing society, railways across Japan are in decline. Once bankrupt, these lines cease operation, further entrenching automobile dependance. Transport is an interesting thing - people will generally use the most convenient mode which is made available to them. If sqadzillions of yen are spent on roads and highways each year, then it is no wonder that more people drive. Oh yea, I forgot - they don't. People are driving less and less in Japan. And still quantrillions are spent on new roads and highways! I just don't get it. Well, actually I do. It is apathy. The one saving grace for Japan is that the country really just isn't made for cars, and most people these days realize that - so no matter how much they spend trying to get us to foresake our trains/bicycles/walking shoes for cars, we still drive less!

One more nail in the coffin

Just as Nissan and Japanese banks spend up big in a desperate effort to squeeze out a profit out of Indian citizens, and as the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party "road gang" fight tooth and nail to retain bloated road building budgets in the face of stiff opposition to further roadwork pork-barrelling, precipitously falling car use in Japan and health insurance budget shortfalls... just as auto manufacturers are announcing falling earnings that seems to be painting a long term picture of an oversaturated world auto market in which citizens are finally seeing the limits to automobile's as a form of transportation in just about every part of the developed world ... here we have another nail in the coffin of auto-centric society. THIS ARTICLE describing a report on the direct connection between particulates and DVT is certainly a killer for gasoline vehicles - and hybrid electric automobiles aren't much better (if at all) because in most places, coal is burned to provide the electricity.

Who said Japan doesn't invest in cycling?

This thing really is nuts.



Thanks to The Aesthetic Elevator for that one. It's probably only 20minutes from my home but I have never seen nor heard of it.

Frankly I think good old on-street parking is pretty good (get rid of a few on-street car parking spaces and you could make a few thousand bicycle parking spots in a flash), but this sort of thing looks like just the ticket for a big train station like this.

Incidentally, this link from "TAE" is also a cracker - a short video presentation by James Kunstler at TED.

Auto-society will never be safe

People sometimes mistake the "carfree" movement as the pipedream of some maniac who unrealistically want to rid us entirely of every last automobile on the planet. In a world overrun with automobiles today, that might seem a pointless exercise. But most of the issues boil down to three very valid points - safety, quality of life, and environmental impact. Most of these problems can be largely alleviated without ridding the world of cars entirely, but we do need to move beyond auto-society.

In this post, I am going to add items from the news which give examples of these fundamental issues. I will keep coming back to it as I find news clippings. First, safety.

SAFETY
If you ever thought that an auto-society could be safe if only we could all just drive carefully, the following will bring you out of that dream. These few articles will give pretty irrefutable proof (as if you really needed any) that automobile society will never be a safe society.

1. Careless drivers
   Triple drink-driver behind bars and One dead in police pursuit crash
   The sheer volume of stories like this highlight the fact that there will always be careless drivers who do not care much for their own life and safety, and therefore are prepared to put everybody else's lives at risk along with their own. As long as the system permits this, streets will never be safe for children and elderly. These two stories that speak for themselves, but for each of these stories there are literally thousands more like them. We need protection for non-driving road users. This can be done in many ways - more car free streets, better transit, traffic calming, wide flat unobstructed pavements protected by solid concrete bollards between road and shoulder on all roads with auto traffic. It could also be done by creating car-free urban residential communities with a single car-park and almost no vehicular traffic within. You can bet your bottom dollar that whatever the solution, it will be people friendly, not car-friendly.
   
   
2. Elderly drivers:
   Driver, 78, jailed for road death.
   Auto-society begets auto-dependence. This leads older people to cling to their cars when they should not. Everyone gets old and many people get too sick to drive, but no-one wants to lose independence. In non-auto societies of Europe and Asia, the elderly live longer largely because they have more independence and mobility into very old age. The very design of walkable towns and cities allows the elderly to remain a part of the community well into old age - walking to shops, doctors and family - the social and psychological benefits are just as important as the physical fitness. No wonder Westerners die young by comparison. In a society where you need a car to buy milk, go to the bank, or the doctor, having a licence revoked is almost equivalent to receiving a "death row" sentence as we are shunted off to a "retirement home" to await death with a gaggle of other death-row strangers. The gentleman in this story is at least contrite. It could have been much worse for him, but it is still a horrible outcome for all involved. And as Western societies age, this issue will only get worse. The worse it gets, the more we realize the limits of automobile society.
   
   
3. Automobiles as Weapons
   Duo Deliberately Crash 4WD into Hospital Ward
   Driver deliberately crashes into 50 cyclists, ends Olympic cyclists' bid
   As long as automobiles are: (1) big and heavy, (2) able to go fast, and (3) freely controlled by the driver, they can and will be used as weapons to one extent or another. Whether it is cutting a bit too close to another road user just to "scare them a bit", or deliberately crashing a 4WD into a hospital ward, the ability to cause great physical damage, injury and death to others is the same. This story highlights a design flaw with the auto-society.
   
   
4. Sprawl leads to crime
   $100K offered for clues to hit and run incident
   Auto-society leads to sprawling cities and towns - we all know that. But what many do not realise is that sprawl also leads to crime. When there are many dark roads with few pedestrians and no eyewitnesses to see what goes on - people get away with crimes that they would not get away with if the city had remained more dense. In more dense "old world" cities, there are always many eyes to make sure that people don't give in to the criminal urge in the first place, and help catch them if they do.
   
   
5. 
   

trioBike

And how could I talk about child carrying bicycle options without mentioning this crazy thing!!


It certainly looks the part. About the only review I have seen online by someone who has actually ridden the thing is here: Bakfiets en Moor, and by the sounds of it he is someone would know. Unfortunately the review is not good. The concept is very enticing, but as is often the case in the world of cycling - simple may be the very best.

Another interesting blog here about another city in the world that emphasises non-motor transportation - Copenhagenize. Can you imagine - the mayor for traffic and environment has proposed that on days when pollution is above recommended levels, traffic lights stay red a little longer - drivers would be text messaged in the morning in advance to give those who are able to the option to chose another mode of getting to work. That's great. If time is money then this is pure Capitalism. And who was the smart person who put the transportation and environment porfolios together in the first place? What a fantastic idea!

Where is the Tokyo DOT on this?

London "gets it", Paris "gets it", Barcelona "gets it" and now even New York seems to "get it".




Where is the Tokyo Transport Department on all this...?

A Win for Sanity

The Tokyo police had announced last year that they were going to begin to sting cyclists for behaviour such as riding with two children, front and back - something that apparently is actually an unenforced no-no.

Well, would you believe, the public reaction was so strong that the police have announced that they will not after all start issuing fines for such behavior. Instead they have requested bicycle makers to make bicycles that are safer for young children. The news has been all over the talk back and TV news.

I think this is a wonderful outcome, and strongly suspect that the police had this in mind from the outset, but simply wished to use it to force a public safety awareness campaign. And by the looks of it, that is exactly what they got. Nothing more, nothing less. Fantastic. A typically Japanese approach to a public issue. I wish the police would use the same force with driver safety issues. But then, perhaps they realize that "driver safety" is something of an oxymoron.

All the same, my wife and I do not use standard Japanese "Mama-chari" (ママチャリ) with our kids. We bought a trailer that can be pulled by a bicycle (子供乗せトレーラー), ours is a Chariot). That way even if the parent slips and the bike falls over, the children are still sitting pretty in the back (yelling nonchallantly "Mum! What are you doing up there?!") There are many other options also, the most practical of which is probably the beautiful Bakfiets Cargobike which has a low centre of gravity(低い重心), so that a tumble is far less likely to hurt anyone than a mama-chari, and also has a rain cover for the children. As the kids get a little older, I find they enjoy riding on my Xtracycle, and the concept is more or less the same but without the rain protection.

Anyhow, there is quite a bit of talk on TV and radio etc about finding the perfect bicycle for families... if you hear such talk, please let them know that such options already exist in the form of the Chariot and the Xtracycle and the Cargobike and others.

Velomobile in Japan

I came across the website of a guy in Japan who is really getting into his Velomobile. Lots of posts about other interesting bikes and human powered vehicles - all in Japanese too for those of you who prefer. There is also a piece about the Kuroneko Yamato delivery guys who now have vast fleets of e-bikes with whopping great trailers to deliver their stuff. I have not yet uploaded my pictures of them, so here is his:



Incidentally, speaking of Kuroneko Yamato delivery guys, there is a famous running race near Tokyo called the Ohyama Tozan race, a fabulous race for mountain goats young and old that takes you from the train station up through quaint shopping malls perched on the mountainside and up through shrines, further and further up until your lungs almost explode to finish and enjoy the view and a big bowl of tonjiru and a green tea under the eaves of a shrine. This year it seems there was a whole team of Kuroneko Yamato guys doing the race - in their uniforms, caps and all. Darn fast too by all accounts. One thing about these hill climbs - every ounce of extra fat is a major liability.

The Dawn of "Personal Rapid Transit"

...or perhaps re-birth. Anyhow, nice article here at Project for Public Spaces.

Deutsche Bank: Oil at $150 a barrel by 2010

Carfree USA and World Carfree Network are excited by WSJ article on DB's forecast of potentially severe constraints on supply in the very near term. What does it mean? Well, it is not good news for China and India, Russia and Eastern Europe. Much of the growth in the forecast oil demand is due to increasing motor vehicle use in these countries. They have invested a vast fortune in automobile infrastructure, equipment and tooling, and just as they are starting to enjoy this new "economy" they are discovering that it is one that is not sustainable in any way. These countries have a momentum to their automobile economies and will likely continue growing "on the automobile's back". This is bad news for anyone working for the environmental department in China or India, as the wave of international investment in their auto industries threatens just about everything they wish to protect. But perhaps oil at $150 will start to turn this around, and fortunately for them, they are not as far down the road to autopia as the West, so the transition to post-auto economy will not be as painful. Not quite so for the West.

What does $150 oil mean for the USA? Well, aside from the profits to the few US oil companies with reserves this isn't going to be pretty. Gasoline price rises will squeeze US drivers just as US consumers are being hit with inflation elsewhere and a falling dollar as it is hard to see how the Fed slashing rates to mitigate sub-prime fallout will not fuel inflation and a further falling dollar, and yet despite this banks, to shore up balance sheets, will pocket most of the gains from the rate cuts and borrowing costs will rise anyway. So drivers, consumers and borrowers in the US are probably going to be particularly hurt. There will surely be some collateral damage in the corporate sector also, particularly highly leveraged industries as the credit squeeze begins to hit overly geared businesses just as overly leveraged consumers are forced to cut back spending.

Will anyone in the USA gain from all this? Well, quite possibly, just maybe the US citizen will be better off in the long run. It is quite possible that this could be the tipping point for Americans - a decoupling of Americans from their automobiles, and automobiles from the American dream. As the average Joe begins to have trouble affording their car or the gasoline to power them, as it becomes fashionable to not drive, as average citizen begins to recognize the myriad of environmental hazards automobiles cause coming to a head world-wide as Chinese and Russians begin to drive cars en-mass and cause all the same environmental problems as Americans did for 50 years but on a scale that will have global ramifications (including the yellow sands that actually already blow over into the United States). As this happens, I actually think that average Joe American citizen just might "get it" by then and decide that the automobile lifestyle is just not the way to go about things in the 21st century. One or two American automobile companies might even go bankrupt, as several seem destined to do - and the American public might even just let them go this time, with niether the political stomach or the cash for any kind of public taxpayer bailout. For after all, that is the capitalist system is it not? Live and let die. If Americans no longer want as many cars, the automakers' resources should be put to better use doing something else. If they aren't, the companies will fail, and be forced to find a better use of their resources (or the resources themselves will have to find a better use of themselves...). In any case, while once the automobile was seen as the symbol of potency and all that is great about America, I have a feeling that in the 21st century Americans could become their biggest detractors.

By then will they be able to save China and India from choking themselves to death by asphyxiation on the ghost of an old American dream that no longer exists, and the rampant "growth" and the suburban sprawl and waste and corruption that inevitably come with it? I don't know. It might be a close call. It is certainly ironic that the very people who arguably started this whole crazy oil-fueled half-century of drive-by environmental disaster might be the ones who come to rescue us all from it at the 11-th hour, but Americans have an uncanny knack for timing. And Japan will go along, because instinctively, the Japanese knew all along that it wasn't a Good Idea in the first place.

50,000 heart deaths/yr caused by traffic noise

Close to half of all Europeans are regularly exposed to traffic noise levels that are potentially dangerous to health, a new study has found. See news report HERE.

I might add that the Japanese took noise pollution seriously back in the seventies with the development of the Shinkansen high speed "bullet train" lines, and now environmental quality standards for shinkansen railway noise are among the strictest in the world. Too bad the government counter this by spending some 5,000,000,000 yen each year building roads that have a constant stream of vehicles spewing noise and so much else besides.

No More Pork !

What does this graph represent? It represents the percentage of people, according to a survey by TV Asahi, who support the current Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda's cabinet plan to spend 59,000,000,000,000 Yen on roads over the next ten years. 17% support the plan vs 65% do NOT support the plan. Is this a mandate for change or WHAT?

So what DO people want? Well you can be pretty damn sure they don't just want cheaper gasoline either. What people want are bold solutions from government that will provide real lifestyle improvement, not just a shot in the arm to "growth" because people are driving cars more.

I saw a news piece recently about a local train line North of Tokyo. The line was on the verge of being closed permanently. The news report talked of the aging population and yes of people driving more these days. Well, if the government is spending 59,000,000,000,000 Yen every ten years on roads, then OF COURSE people are going to drive cars more. Is this a Good Thing? No, of course not - and 65% of people instinctively recognize this.

Recently the "yellow sands" (黄砂) have been very bad in Tokyo also. Last weekend it looked like a thunderstorm was approaching, but it was just a yellow dust, blown over from China. Chinese desertification is expanding by the rate of minutes per hectare. Tests show that the yellow sands blow over as far as North America, and collect all sorts of pollution along the way from Chinese coal power plants, Korean industry and Japanese automobiles. It is a disgusting haze that looks like a yellow fog, but leaves a foul dust on and through everything, and gets in your eyes and mouth.

I am surprised that Japan does not try to do more to help China deal with its environmental problems, because if we don't, these problems are most likely to spill over (they already are). But then I fear that Japan may have already sold out - we are largely a nation of auto makers. They used to be only for export to America where they raped the countryside there, but gradually thanks to budgets like 59,000,000,000,000 Yen on roads every 10 years, Japan is also in danger of becoming a gas-guzzing nation ruled by impatient, horn-blowing, self-centered, egotistical, serial dangerous-drivers also. Our biggest banks give huge loans to automakers to build auto factories in the very neighboring countries that we should be trying to help save from this fate - but all we are doing is help rape them just like this country was and continues to be raped in the name of "economic growth".


Wow. I am glad I got that off my chest...

Great Carbon Offset Spoof

These guys have already been mentioned in British Parliament, so maybe I am the only one who hasn't heard of them, but wow, what a fantastic spoof of carbon offset schemes. And it addresses an important and overlooked issue with carbon offsetting and trading - the human behaviour element. How is it likely to make people behave? Probably something like this:


Check out their website here. Check out the "Our Projects" page. It's a riot. And you can just see people doing these kinds of calculations with their driving and flying in a carbon offset context also.

Trek child trailer on sale in Japan

I found this by chance on the website of Cycle Yoshida. The Trek Child trailer (トレック　チャイルドトレーラー 「デラックス ゴーバッグ」) was not available in Japan before as far as I know (or I might have bought one). We have never tried it, so don't ask me details but it looks quite nice, and being a Trek I have no doubt that it is very well designed and built. The price is reasonable for a quality trailer. It has great space and good weight capacity. It looks pretty cool too.

If I were looking at this for ourselves I would be asking whether there is a rain cover included or available, and perhaps whether the trailer itself can fold, as this can be handy if not always necessary.

Anyhow, well done Trek and to Cycle Yoshida for making high quality trailers available in Japan. It is high time Japanese families had some quality options available. I personally have a lot of respect for the good old "mama-chari" and "Jitsuyosha" but it is about time a few deluxe options to coax more families out of their automobiles.

Xtracycle+Big Dummy taking off in USA

Interesting little TV news clip here about the BIG DUMMY+Xtracycle taking off in the USA. Big Dummy is a bike developed by Surely specifically for the Xtracycle. Interesting also that the Surely guys did not mention anything about Xtracycle, who were the ones who actually designed the concept in the first place. Maybe that is because they don't want you to know that the big dummy is actually not really necessary. You can put the Xtracycle on just about any old bike you like. That's what I do and it works a treat, and a damn sight cheaper, and you can import/export more easily by buying the bike locally and attaching the Xtracycle to it. Anyhow, nice to see that it's becoming more popular. Xtracycle are out of stock again, so it must be selling like crazy.

The War on Traffic

Many people forget these days that in the 1960' and 70's, Japan had something of a civil war - the "War on Traffic" or 「交通戦争」. This was a topic taken seriously in the media to a backdrop of skyrocketing gasoline prices, the oil shocks and deep social unrest and anger at the government riding (driving?) roughshod over the people. Many efforts were made in traffic calming, including speed limits, restricting automobile access around schools and on back streets, major improvements to bus, rail, subway and other public transport. This is also the time when bicycle use exploded in Japan with efforts by local governments to promote bicycle use. People might have even believed the war on traffic could have been won.

But as we all know, the Japanese lost their War on Traffic, utterly and completely. There were many reasons for the failure of common sense. The Korean and Vietnam wars had contributed to the huge growth in Japan's automobile industry, which then brought huge political power to bear on the automobile side. Memory of the oil shock faded, and gasoline prices gradually subsided. Efforts by the IMF and World Bank to promote automobile use with massive loans for highway building (a.k.a. "infrastructure") were beginning to have traction among the public - automobile sales grew rapidly, and with it more political power. The massive highway building in the leadup to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was a major coup for the roads lobby in this sense. And the American way of life (i.e. automobile + sprawl) still held an irresistible allure.

Traffic planning and traffic calming efforts on the other hand were piece meal, tended to play around the edges of the real issue, and by the 1980's were completely hijacked by the very people that they were intending to control - people who loved cars. Eventually all road works and traffic had one primary goal - the fast and efficient flow of automobile traffic.

Low gasoline prices in the 1990's, combined with growing power of the auto-makers as their share of the economy grew really consolidated the position of the 道路族 roads lobby. Most of all, the tsunami of Keynsian fiscal stimulus directed at road building through the 1990's completely cemented the automobile's position in Japanese Society - particularly in the countryside. Much of the road building in the 1990's was in country towns which had until then largely escaped from the disease of sprawl that was afflicting the major cities. Bypasses, high speed national roads combined with sprawling suburban construction were rampant. Pressure from China and elsewhere in agriculture, and low worldwide prices for primary produce pushed down the price of agricultural land, which was already depressed from the bursting of the real estate bubble in '89 - '90. These factors combined to push Japan headlong into rampant urban sprawl that continues today with the creation of local and foreign big box retailers on the suburban outskirts of town, still chasing an American dream that even the Americans have already begun to wake from. 15 years ago in Japan it would have been entirely feasible to get by with a bicycle and the train because everything you wanted was concentrated around the station in the centre of town. These days, things are not so simple, even in small country cities. The town centre may have everything you NEED, but if you want the cheapest or hippest items, you need to go to various big box shops scattered all over the city. Japan's consumption of oil, coal and other items continued to rise.

So Japan lost it's "War on Traffic", and the "rebels" are today few and far between and not well organized. I cannot help but hope that the increasing awareness of global warming, the fact that building roads as a fiscal stimulus is now regarded as having been a big mistake, the growing 車離れ and the amazing success of initiatives such as the Velib model will stimulate people to start a new fundamental debate again in Japan about the kind of lifestyle people want and whether the automobile is going to play a big part in that or not.

In China, by contrast - the War on Traffic is in full pitched battle right now. Stories like THIS ONE from NPR in the US highlight the real fight that is going on. I see a similar story to Japan's - auto money is starting to talk. An Olympics in Beijing has become a lever to push through the construction of massive highway systems. Trains that are built, go to the airport. Local governments in some cities have even banned electric bicycles for whatever reason they can get away with - knowing that more money will flow (for the time being) if they promote automobiles (and culture and lifestyle be damned). It is clear that the Chinese populace has not given up the fight. In another report, students at a University appear to have vented their collective anger at a driver, destroying the car completely and even flipping it over. Here is the story from the other camp. You would have to be blind not to see that this event shows the utter frustration and anger towards automobiles and the friction between the two camps. I hope the Chinese authorities take it as a sign, because if the Chinese continue to attack the issue by playing around the edges the way the Japanese did in their own War on Traffic, the Chinese will slowly move to the auto camp, and the Chinese will cease to be citizens and become another docile bunch of homogenous consumers just like the rest of us in the "developed" world.

Post-Car Society

Who would have thought Newsweek would run an article about "kuruma-banare", the growing trend among Japanese of forsaking their automobiles for good? I didn't think Newsweek capable of it myself. But HERE IT IS. It seems the trend has finally reached a stage it can no longer be ignored. If the decline in new car sales continues, "kuruma-banare" could well become 2008 buzzword of the year.

"Catchment Area"

Once again, I am convinced that the Japanese have nailed what is perhaps the best possible solution to a complex social issue. I found this brief article in the UK paper the Guardian:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329742428-115019,00.html

The author describes how in the old days, school students had to go to the nearest school. It reduced choices, but dramatically strengthened communities and ensured healthy commuting lifestyles for children. However these days, the vast majority of parents in the English speaking world drive their kids to school for a variety of reasons - the sprawl means bigger distances and less friendly eyes to keep an eye on the kids, the lack of community means there are less friendly eyes at all, the lack of safe routes to school, the desire to go to a "better" school across town, the fact that everyone else also drives which makes it dangerous for the kids to walk... in a vicious cycle until we reach where we are today with crisis levels of childhood stress, obesity, lack of independence and dearth of social skills.

Nothing however, could be further from the situation in Japan. As far as I can tell of the Japanese system, at least where I live right now, there is what seems to be an extremely good solution. Ostensibly, and as a general rule, children are required to go to their nearest school. However, there are options for parents who desire other choices. First there is of course the private school system. But parents can also apply to send their children to other public schools - if they are prepared to jump through the right hoops. The whole process is intentionally onerous and involves making your case to the ward office and then the application is subject to further review by the public school board, who are required to give priority to local children. Occassionally parents will try to game the system by renting an apartment nearby and registering this address on the application. The ward office is aware of this and do in fact perform spot checks to discourage this behaviour, and of course word gets around in tight knit communities.

This system sounds like a fantastic compromise between the public good of stronger communities, and the desire to allow a degree of choice to parents and students. It also appears to work quite smoothly.

Flowing from, and based upon this foundation system are a number of other excellent rules that can be and are applied at schools in Japan with excellent results, making commuting a generally wonderful experience all round. Firstly, children are required to walk to school, and to do so alone without their parents. Being without parents, elementary school children are not allowed to ride bicycles to school, and are required to walk. This encourages children to travel to school together in groups. Most children are within a kilometre or so of their school, and even this distance isn't all that far to walk once you get used to it, so not being able to ride a bike isn't such a big drag. It also encourages kids to hang together, and avoids the dangers that might come of having younger kids riding bikes to school when they are going by themselves, as parents to not generally walk their kids to school. Not riding bikes also reduces the potential range of the children, so they are less likely to go further afield where friendly community eyes may not be watching, or dangerous unfamiliar roads. In any case, disallowing bicycles is nothing compared to what happens if you decide to drive your kids to school, God forbid...

In the land of the Toyota, children are almost universally spared from being driven to school by car. Parents are not allowed to drive their children to school. Yes, you heard me - NOT ALLOWED. Fancy that. In fact, roads near school entrances are routinely blocked completely during the school commute hours, and drivers who are caught in such areas are fined and booked by the police. In other words, it is ILLEGAL to drop off your kid at the gate to many schools. And as a result - there is no rush hour at the school gate, there is none of the noise, the danger, the stress or ANY of that - just peace and quiet and the sound of kids laughing and talking as they walk to school together.

I had not really thought about it so much before, but in Japan you really do see children out walking about, playing and enjoying their route to school, feeling the changing seasons, seeing and smelling the flowers. In fact, I see a few on my way to work, and say good morning to them every day. It is wonderful seeing them grow, and there are a few precious serendipitous moments when the weather is special or something happens. I used to take my two children to kindergarten behind my bicycle on a small "Chariot" trailer. When the regular school kids I would see on my way to work first saw me do this up the hill, they of course swamped me immediately. They all wanted a look, and peppered me with questions for a few seconds, then goodbyes and off to school. A few mornings later, they all help push me up the hill, just for fun. Then Winter came, and they helped me up the hill in the snow when I was struggling. This all by a group of 8 to 12yr old boys. There is also a disabled gentleman who likes to sit on his front porch and chat with the kids as they go to school, and there are many others like him who do the same, just for the fun of seeing the kids grow, and for the real tangible sense of community it fosters. I imagine they are a good pair of eyes to discourage any funny business that Westerners are so afraid of when asked if they would let their children walk to school on their own. It is also nice when you know who's kids belong with which adults, and for example you might see a kid on your regular commute with a broken arm, and strike up a conversation in the supermarket with their parent the next time you see them. The parent tells you they have some medical condition that causes such and such, and armed with this knowledge you can watch out for them, or mention to the headmaster when you see them, so they can watch out for them etc etc. In a real example, some school kids knocked out a street lamp here after school one day. After the incident, a flyer was put up asking for witnesses. A few locals had seen them and were pretty sure they knew who it was and mentioned to the parents. Sure enough the kids fessed up and mystery solved. From the kids perspective, you have this vast boundless freedom when you are let loose on your own, but at the same time the kids are in fact wrapped the whole time in this loving, protecting, real (not virtual) community who will keep them on the right path just by way of being there, a community which the kids don't even really notice much until they grow old enough to appreciate it.

You miss all of that when kids are driven to school. You don't see anyone but your family and your teacher. No-one will see your broken arm. Nobody knows you in the neighborhood. Nobody helps you push your bike up the hill, or share a smile and the joy of a beautiful Spring morning. It is such a shame that several generations of kids in the English speaking world missed that whole formative experience, but one can only hope that they will find away for their own children to experience it. It will be a hard task, but undoubtedly will begin with the establishment and enforcement of (1) safe routes to school, and (2) the sense of community that such a system is so dependent on.

Yours in hope...

Rail Privatization

I found this article in the FT: Deutsche Bahn IPO to proceed

The Germans may perhaps look to Japan's experience with rail privatization. What seems to have happened here is vast improvements in efficiency in running existing lines but something of a stagnation in capital investment in new lines or services, and what gains have been made have had hidden costs.

One thing that Japan Rail (JR) has become heavily involved in since privatization is residential real estate construction and sales - i.e. promoting, advertising, supporting and profiting from suburban sprawl. They have a program of subdividing massive areas around outlying stations, and advertising these lots on their trains, sometimes in tandem with a new express line etc. The powerful synergies are undoubtable - a fantastic sales and advertising networks, insider knowledge on any new lines or service, the ability to add carparks to stations to facilitate these sprawling suburban lifestyles, and once they sell a house in these outlying suburbs, they have a lifetime of outer suburban commuting revenue from that owner, who would probably otherwise be an inner city renter. The profit potential is certainly fat. However, clearly the national rail network provider's focus has shifted away from providing a public good towards a stronger profit motive. On the whole, is it REALLY a good thing if rail services can be improved using profits garnered by raping society on another front? By creating vast new bed towns and feeding suburban sprawl, with all the well-known and documented social and environmental ills that this involves, the overall outcome is debatable.

Note to the Germans: Beware of unwitting externalizations such as this when considering, or when measuring the success of your new experiment. Many of these things rear their ugly heads many years on, although with proper oversight some may be avoided.

The Issue of Housing Affordability

Housing affordability has long been a major political issue. This is increasingly the case in Australia and New Zealand, where speculative local and international investment has driven prices extremely high. The latest Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey (PDF here) has just been released and includes UK, Ireland, Canada, USA, NZ, and Australia. Based on 2007 Q3 data the report unsurprisingly shows extremely low levels of affordability for NZ and Australia.

This is undeniable, but what should be questioned more is a fairly insideous argument - dangerous even, propounded by many, including none other than former Governor of the NZ Reserve Bank Dr. Donald Brash who, in his introduction to the study, states (Brashly, of course) that "Once again, the Demographia survey leads inevitably to one clear conclusion: the affordability of housing is overwhelmingly a function of just one thing, the extent to which governments place artificial restrictions on the supply of residential land.."

This is not surprising coming from an economist but it is a load of codswallop. Not because it isn't true, but because in life the easiest solution is not always the best. In fact it is often the worst. Let's think about this for a moment. What is the easiest way for the governments of a country like Australia and NZ to improve housing affordability? Well, the answer has to be by releasing more "vacant" land for development. Mr. Brash and many others are clamouring for this in Australia and NZ today. Why? Because it works - yea, it works all right. It works like getting a loan from a loan shark will help you pay of your gambling debt so that you can keep gaming without worrying about bothersome things like rehabilitation. No - banish the thought. I apologise for suggesting such a dreary boring do-goody thing. Much more fun to borrow from the loan shark and have a bit more fun. Much more fun to release a bit more land, keep the economy buzzing along with all the new residential housing and road building and beautifully mind-numbingly endless suburban sprawl it generates.

Hell, yea. Who wants to talk about cost? Who wants to think about those irksome things that responsible economists call "externalities".

Ok. Enough cynicism. What really happens when the government releases land? In a word, "sprawl". What happens when you have sprawl? Well, lots of things, and most of them are not good, except for the fact that the economy probably grows because prices come down, more people buy into the suburban dream, builders get busy and everyone is hunky dory... for a while... But the stark, inconvenient reality that everyone is trying so hard to pretend not to notice is that we are building growth at the expense of future generations. This is most strikingly shown by the US experience. The United States government is finding that it is having to spend an every greater proportion of the budget on the maintenance and upkeep of all the roads and sprawling infrastructure that it has build. Personal debt is at record levels because essentially that is what is funding the growth from individual consumption. In other words, once the benefits to growth from the stimulus have long withered away and been spent on flat screen TV's, all you have is the government liabilities of roads maintenance and upkeep, increased costs of maintaining the police forces to patrol these expanded urban areas, the electricity production to keep all those air conditioners pumping, the cost of all the extra sewage, drainage, road cleaning, ambulance services, not to mention the collateral damage from increased health burden from more injuries and environmental issues from low density cities. This whole argument reminds me very much of Dr. Robert Lustig's obesity interview I wrote of recently, in which he described the negative feedback loop effect that sugar and fructose has on the body. We have a similar negative feedback loop going on here.

Never let a financial economist convince you that growth is a good thing for its own sake. Look at what that the growth is comprised of and what that is going to cost you - now and into the future. A financial economist is more like a banker - they don't really give a damn who takes the money and what they do with it - only whether or not they can pay, and how much. And if the economy is growing, there is more chance that people will repay - so hell, ANY growth must be good, right...? (wrong!)

And don't think that China is doing it right either. They are going down exactly the same path - only it isn't a path any more -it is a 12 lane highway, and they are going down it at breakneck speed.

So let's think of a few advantages of keeping house prices UP. There are a few. You may be surprised. One is that it discourages Australians from buying McMansions. I find it fascinating that the same Australians who winge about the price of housing, are the ones who have made the average Australian new home THE LARGEST IN THE WORLD. No sympathy from me.

Another advantage is that foreign buyers are less likely to buy into Australian residential housing markets. This is an interesting one here. Australians tend to spend a little too much on consumption. In return they need to sell something to the foreigners. But Australians don't make much that foreigners want, so they sell shares in mining businesses and yes, residential real estate. Australia has one of the most liquid real estate markets in the world. Surely international speculation in these markets is something that keeps prices very high. I suspect, however, that more important is international investment in DEBT (RMBS). Investors buy the loans that banks make to homebuyers. Australians, addicted to their McMansions, buy ever bigger homes at inflated prices, promising to pay this borrowed money back. In other words, the real speculator here is the HOMEBUYER. For now, with China and the price of commodities booming, we have managed to pull this illusion off. But it cannot last - unless of course we force the government to release some more land so that we can party on a bit more!

But really. C'mon. We can do better than that. Are we citizens or consumers? What are you?

Project for Public Spaces

Project for Public Spaces, an organization of professionals in urban planning, environmental design, architecture and other fields has come out with their January bulletin, which covers some of the latest activities in New York and elsewhere. Once again we find praise for what is being done in Paris these last few years.

This is perhaps the most well organized and professional group I have seen working with communities, business and government to promote urban development for livable cities. Among other things, they have a fascinating section on Streets as Places.

The Bike Sharing Blog

I thought I would briefly introduce a nice blog I found called "The Bike Sharing Blog", which provides lots of information about successful bike sharing programs like Velib in Paris, and not so successful projects like that in Brussels, and examines the reasons why. They also had this neat little video clip about the Velib system in Paris.


Bikes Belong presents: Velib from Bikes Belong Coalition on Vimeo.


Enough said. Take a look for yourself. Add it to your feed reader.

The Dorozoku

Terrie's Take, an email periodical by Terrie Loyd, founder of the Japan Inc Magazine, widely read among the foreign community in Tokyo, has an interesting article HERE about the tussle between the LDP and DJP over gasoline taxes in Japan. Terrie notes that the DJP is attempting to ride on the ever growing public cry against pork-barrel road building "doro-zoku" in the LDP and other parties and force tokutei zaidan gasoline tax revenues (a special gasoline tax currently ear-marked primarily for road building) to be used for other needs of society.

The first push seems to have been thwarted, however and the politicians have decided, for whatever reason, that tokutei zaidan gasoline tax revenues, will continue to be used only for these purposes. [if someone has more detail on how this came about I would be interested to hear]

So instead, DJP is using its power to stop the tokutei zaidan gasoline tax law from being renewed. However, it seems likely that DJP stalling techniques may instead simply force the tax to be dropped completely, which would bring the price of gasoline down in short order
, effectively subsidising road users at the expense of road builders.


Hmmmm. Now, you tell me which is worse, subsidising gasoline consumers, or subsidising road builders? They sound pretty damn similar to me. And in fact it is worse than this, because a large portion of the special tax on gasoline (the "tokutei zaidan") is in fact going towards paying down debts on past road building, as opposed to funding new porkbarrel roadworks.

The result would be simply a loss of legitimate revenue for the public purse (that a portion continues to be mis-allocated to wasteful projects is another issue) and the net impact a shot in the arm for a dying and desperate auto industry and oil consumers. I am quite pleased to see that the media is generally opposed to such a rediculous outcome in this day and age.

The auto industry may be dying a slow and painful death, but it is nothing compared to what will happen if we let this disease continue unchecked and metastasize into China and India...

Cheap Oil all over again?

Before the USA slides into its economic funk and the price of oil slides all the way back again, I really do hope that the people of China and India realize that the problem with allowing cars to overrun cities goes well beyond problems of carbon dioxide pollution - and base their city infrastructures on other transportation modes. But then again, it is as much a problem with the first world investors in these industries in China and India - bringing the same problems to these countries.

The discussion should be more about:
Pollution
Huge cost in road deaths
Huge cost in road injuries
Loss of space for people
Noise and nuisance
Lack of human interaction and social fabric
All the other environmental costs other than CO2 (tyres, oil, plastics)
Environmental cost of producing these vehicles and the materials that go into them - not just running them

Anything else ? I am sure there are more reasons why cars just don't work as the primary transport system for cities ...

The Obesity Epidemic

There is a seriously interesting interview here all about the obesity epidemic, and what some researchers are convinced is causing it. Quite a bit of food for thought (pun intended). I thought I would posting here because the obesity epidemic in the Western world is so closely linked to our automobile dependency. The interview goes into some detail about exactly how and why exercise is the single most effective (perhaps only?) remedy for obesity, and perhaps even more interestingly, why fructose may be far more dangerous than we thought, and how the food industry may be literally poisoning us by putting fructose into everything.

It is well worth a read - or even better, have a listen to the interview -it is quite a gem. Norman Swan is a very accomplished radio interviewer and in this one he really meets his match. You can get audio archives of the Health Report online via iTunes etc.

Transcript of the interview:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2007/2104024.htm

Again and again, visitors to stay with me in Japan remark at how much exercise they get in Tokyo - all completely inadvertently just by walking, catching trains, and going up and down stairs. By the end of the day, my sedentary visitors are usually quite worn out. It is no surprise, they remark, that Japanese people tend to be trimmer than Westerners. Well, that is half the story. My Japanese friends also remark when they go overseas at how sweet the food is in the West. Sugar, according to our Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology, University of California San Francisco, is almost half fructose, and therein lies the other half of the answer. The Japanese people may eat a lot of white rice, but they tend to avoid sweet foods, and the sweets they do create tend to be far less sweet than Western tastes would demand.