Stopping the Bleeding, or Creating a New Strategy?

Obama, Congress, heck even the Automakers are saying that the auto industry needs to create a new model to be viable in the 21st century. Yet, little is really going to change with this first stimulus (though seems it may be in doubt today) to the big 3--it will be the first of more than one, depending on bankruptcy, and Thomas Friedman in his Op-Ed in the NY Times today has a good point as to why this will not work:

our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle.

The problem I have with his column (which can be read here.) and the idea of the "car 2.0" is that our problems don't start and stop with autos. It starts and stops with the way that we depend on automobiles, the way we live too distant from our normal daily activities (work, school, errands, etc.) and the way that we travel distances that could be more efficiently traveled (en masse) by high-speed rail.

These automakers are responsible for killing the sustainable transit options of the early 1900's, Americans were all too happy to drive alone and live further from the city-center and the oil/gas industry has been reaping the rewards--and using that money to line the pockets of government.

It is time for a paradigm shift--it is not about the most efficient car, it is about the most efficient forms of transportation and more sustainably built cities and lives.

I'm going to have to finally watch "Taken for a Ride" a film about an "auto and oil industry campaign, led by General Motors, to buy and dismantle streetcar lines. Across the nation, tracks were torn up, sometimes overnight, and diesel buses placed on city streets.