Transportation vs. The Privilege

At the height of World War 2, President Roosevelt challenged the country to pass a Second Bill of Rights. Among these were the right to a job, the right to compete in a fair market, and the right to health care.

Had Congressional Democrats all agreed with FDR that health care was a right going into last year’s debate, I’m sure they would have finished the bill sooner and with a much stronger plan for assuring every American had a reasonable expectation that they could get help if they got sick. It would have forced opponents to defend a health care system that denied Americans help, and why money should be made in guaranteeing somebody’s rights. Instead we got a debate about death panels.

When we establish something is a right, like we have with free speech and gun ownership, we then only debate about how best to assure those rights exist. We often talk about the boundaries that are appropriate, if at all, on speech and possession of weapons, but you’ll rarely find people suggesting we completely deny either without merit.

In that light, I believe transportation as a right. As my old man told me, when you get trapped somewhere, that’s when you lose your freedom as an American. The right to get away-from your home, a job, the neighborhood-on any day or an emergency is essential to life, liberty, and happiness.

Once we’ve established that movement is a right, we can then debate how to ensure people can move around. Taxpayer funding for transportation projects and programs must then guarantee that as many people can move with the best flexibility as possible. Currently, we spend a lot of money building roads and infrastructure to allow cars easy movement throughout our communities.

There’s one problem with that: Driving is, and always will be, a privilege. You learn that when you get a driver’s license. We know that The Privilege can be taken away if you use it irresponsibly.

Yet we fund driving as if it’s a right. In the last major federal transportation bill, we gave road building $4 for ever $1 we gave to transit and other alternatives. If we’re focused on maximizing movement for the most people, we’d invest more in walking, bicycling, transit-all more cost-effective per capita in moving people-and building things closer to where we needed to go for services and goods.

Kids Say the Darndest (& Smartest) Things

Recently, I was at my umpteenth political BBQ of the summer, when I had the most fascinating political conversation. My sparring partner?

A soon-to-be 4^th grader.

She was introduced to me, by a fellow Young Democrat, as a family member who was disappointed with President Obama. Given that I’m a big fan of the President, I’m quick to defend him in light of Republican Obstructionism. I was happy to explain why things aren’t better yet.

Forget that. She was upset because the President hadn’t launched a campaign to trade out every car in America with an electric one.

Of course, I said, we can’t do that yet because there isn’t enough electricity, or battery production facilities, or charging stations….

And I caught myself. There I go again, I thought. Quick to go to the reasons why that wasn’t possible. As we get older, our common first reaction to big ideas is, “No We Can’t (yet).” Did you do the same?

So instead my mind started churning. What was the “Yes We Can” solution? Just one year ago this month, I traded in my old Chevy Blazer for a Toyota Corolla in the “Cash for Clunkers” program. That replaced a lot of old cars and created excitement in a stagnant economy. If Obama emerged in the Rose Garden today and said that in exactly one year, America would have an all-electric vehicle fleet, what would we need to do to make it happen?

We wouldn’t be starting from scratch. Just in the past two years, electric cars have started making a comeback from their 1990’s debacle. Thanks to some investments in battery and energy technology from the stimulus package, energy storage technology improves every week. Businesses are already researching and developing charging stations and infrastructure to charge vehicles. States like California are setting policies that not only favor electric vehicle purchases, but also encourage business and government to install charging machines.

But the current pace guarantees it will take twenty years to completely revolutionize car transportation. In order to meet the one-year goal we’d have to hire, train, and revitalize our manufacturing infrastructure in the United States. We’d have to retrain current autoworkers, make massive investments in our energy grid, and quickly cut out energy waste while ramping up production of electricity and battery storage capability. Electricians would be busy going door-to-door installing high-voltage plugs that would allow families to recharge cars overnight. Parking lots would presumably need to be redesigned and secure charging machines perfected and installed. Combine some government policies and money with a lot private-industry innovation, and every person in America would be back at work in no time.

One year would be rather quick. But could we be up to it? Well, I’m not that old but I have been told time and time again that our country completely changed our manufacturing capabilities to compete in World War 2. Production of War Ships went from months to weeks. Kids sacrificed their toys to supply metal and people of all shapes and sizes grabbed rivet guns and started working. Could we not do something on that scale to free ourselves from oil, just one year after the largest oil pollution disaster in history?

Yes, but wait just a minute, you ask-what about all the cars we’d have to junk?

She had an answer for that, too. She was adamant: No junkyards. Instead, she’d hire people to take them apart, recycle as much of the car as possible, and compost the organic parts in the ground. Jobs, materials, and nutrients. Heh. Once again, try being the naysayer on that one. You probably wouldn’t get invited to the next BBQ.

I told her she needed to write a letter to the President. I assured her that he starts every day reading ten letters from random Americans, and that she ought to tell him exactly what she told me. I gave her my card, with the White House address on it, and assured her she’d only need one stamp unless it was a really long letter.

For a nation looking for inspiration, needing jobs, and risking falling far behind China-not to mention Portugal-in the Clean Energy race, I really hope President Obama reads that letter.