Economic Impacts

Economic Impacts of Automobile Centric Urban Growth

One of the major forces validating the visual aspects to the unsustainability of the automobile is economic.  There are extenuating repercussions seen over the past decades as the US has outsourced its manufacturing: an increase in a lack of jobs.  People without incomes reduce the overall GNP (gross national product).  Large numbers of unemployed people lowers the size of the middle class in the US.  While this paper isn’t written to editorialize or make political comments, there is a point to be made about how local economies are made successful and prosperous.

Micro economics research shows that one dollar will turn over within a local economy 60 times.  To explain: a farmer purchases his equipment from a local hardware store.  The hardware store purchases the products he sells from a local manufacture.  The farmer sells his products to the grocer.  The local manufacturer and his employees purchase goods that the farmer produces from the grocer.  On and on it goes but, the dollar remains locally traded.  The dollar represents work traded.

In an automobile centric society, the automobile immediately removes that dollar from its ability to be circulated within a local community.

As an illustration to the economic loss in an average automobile centric community; in the middle of California, Fresno County is a farming region with a total population of less than one million.  It consumes roughly 500,000 gallons of gasoline per day, Fresno County, like most Western Culture suffers from its automobile centric land-use urban growth design.  Economically, Fresno was once a financially prosperous region but, now is filled with economic poverty.  Every day with the pump price of gasoline at $4 per gallon, Fresno County loses $2,000,000 out of its local economy that would otherwise be kept locally traded.

Where does that money go?  The US consumes 8.77million barrels (42 gallons per barrel) of gasoline per day.  At 368.51 million gallons per day, the US is roughly 1/3 of world consumption.

A rise of $10 per barrel, from $90 to $100 per barrel, world consumption added $1billion per day income increase to the producers.

The automobile centric society is addicted to oil.  It is economically unsustainable as well as environmentally unstable.

In 2007 there was an economic downturn.  The economy had been flourishing, bank credit was easy to attain and the housing market had seen a tremendous burst in real estate equity increase.  One seriously forgotten economic component is that crude oil was sold at $90 per barrel.  During the same time that the housing bubble was increasing, crude oil skyrocketed to $140 per barrel.  The pump price for gasoline increased 40% within weeks.  People who had just remortgaged or purchased new homes didn’t budget a gigantic fuel increase as well as the immediate inflationary costs attributed to reflect added shipping costs pushed onto the market.

It is all part of the consequences from the nature of an automobile centric society.

The history of America’s Old West is full of colorful pictures taming the wild.  The more accurate analysis shows that the US was built on the rail roads as its primary source of transportation.  The history of each metropolitan area shows that the United States was established with a transit oriented urban growth land-use design.  This type of urban development design is far more sustainable than what the West has separated itself into with the automobile centric land-use design.

There are culprit entities that killed small communities by severing the rail component from the transit design.  This effectively terminated economic survival but, it did allow access and the land-use development of outlying areas.

In 1935, a political move lobbied for federal legislation which was passed as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal.  It rendered it illegal for a power company to also own and operate a transit system (local trolley street car service).  At that point in time nearly every metropolitan area had a public street car system that was privately owned and operated (generally owned by the regional power company).  GM (which manufactured buses), Standard Oil of California (fuel for the buses), Firestone Tire, and Philips Petroleum (fuel) structured a joint venture organization and provided equity to National Cities Lines which purchased over 100 transit systems throughout the US and shut down most of the street cars, selling steel rails as scrap.  The manufacturing of buses brought profit to GM, the operations and maintenance of the busing systems brought profit to Standard Oil, Firestone and Philips Petroleum as bussing became products of government subsidies.  National Cities Lines, was eventually convicted of conspiracy.  Again the automobile centric land-use design in regards to public transportation is economically unsustainable with the failed government operated bus industry that continues.

Previously (pre 1935­) every transit company was privately owned, had to purchase its rights-of-ways property, build the system, purchase rails and rail cars, build and maintain the line of its operations and maintenance, carry its own liabilities and make a profit.  Conversely, the automobile industry manufactures a vehicle; does not have to provide rights-of-ways, was not required to provide any guarantees, carried no user liabilities, provides no fuel and has no added maintenance expense.  Its right-of-ways become the burden of its consumer.

Cost of where to operate a vehicle became the burden at the cost of the general public.  The automobile centric design benefits the car manufacturer at the cost and burden of all others.  Other examples of this type of benefiting at the cost and burden of everyone else are extremely rare in business.  The foundation of this industry could conceptually be considered morally irresponsible and, again the automobile centric society is economically unsustainable.

Other aspects from the automobile centric society’s economic decimation are seen in an area’s gross economic output.  In 2009, traffic congestion cost American’s 79million hours and 3.9billion gallons of fuel for a combined $113billion loss. (http://drivesteady.com/how-much-money-and-time-is-wasted-in-traffic)

A community's economic strength is found in areas of concentrated commerce. Automobile centric design communities separate communities and isolate people.

Wholly owned local businesses keep profits within a community. Localized sales of imported gasoline and large box stores owned by out of the area entities cause an economic extraction of otherwise locally distributed dollars. The combination has shown negative effects to be economically unsustainable.

When the origin of Western society was built, the urban design was transit oriented. Commerce cores were town centers which encouraged higher density and vertical urban growth. Today, the automobile centric urban growth has caused those original transit oriented designs to loose functionality.

Since the 1930’s, urban growth in the US has altered its original transit oriented developmental planning design from train and street car orientation to what it is today: a conglomeration of unsustainable urban sprawl based on automobile oriented development.

Revitalization efforts for downtown areas that include a mobility component (streetcars) designed to carry large numbers of people easily around the entire downtown area quickly have served to reinstitute the function of their original transit oriented designs. These revitalization efforts allow these downtowns to once again maintain positions as regional financial hubs of commerce. These reinstituted designs revitalize the original transit oriented growth patterns.

Electric streetcars are no longer a new technology but, are much more sustainable as a mode of transportation than the automobile for city environments. There are, however, extremely efficient new technologies available for mass transit which are completely sustainable. A cognizant and morally responsible government would seek out ways to implement this sustainable technology.