Choking on Congestion

Anyone who flies into Detroit, gets off the plane and drives away from the airport quickly comes to the same conclusion. Southeast Michigan has the worst roads in the nation. Not just bad roads, mind you, the worst. It's astounding how many cracks, potholes, bumps, rusty bridges, and trash-strewn vistas they can pack into every mile.

I've seen better roads in poor, backward, third-world countries. Yet South-east Michigan is home to the largest and richest automotive companies and suppliers in the world, whose combined annual sales exceed the gross domestic product of most nations. I'm amazed they tolerate such a broken-down infrastructure in their own backyard. Don't they realize how this reflects upon their image?

The sorry state of Michigan's roads makes a big impression on first-time visitors, especially those from overseas. And the message it sends is that the American auto industry doesn't really care about the infrastructure in which its products have to operate. As long as it's selling millions of vehicles and making money, who cares if the roads are falling apart?

Think about this. If you claim to be a customer-driven company, how can you ignore the system in which your customers have to operate your products?

The point is, the auto industry is still too focused on the product it makes, and not at all focused on how that product is used. You never see advertisements about frustrated drivers crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or sitting through several traffic lights trying to make a left turn, or driving around futilely searching for a parking spot. Jeez, who would want to buy a car if that's how it was being marketed to them? Yet, that's typically what a large and growing number of drivers experience every day.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development likes to point out that it now takes an affluent Texan just as much time to commute to work every day as it takes a poor Tanzanian to walk for food and water. The Texan drives 60 km (38 miles) a day, and the Tanzanian walks 5 km (3.1 miles), but it takes them both about an hour. That's progress?

According to the Federal Highway Admin., traffic congestion costs the U.S. $75 billion a year. The World Resources Institute pegs the loss at about 2% of GDP, or about $200 billion. I've seen one estimate that says the U.S. loses 6 billion gallons of fuel a year due to congestion. Well, whatever the actual numbers are, they're huge.

One thing's for sure, it's only going to get worse. The U.S. population today is 286 million people, but by 2050 it's expected to grow to 350 million. In other words, we're going to add almost as many people as live in Germany today. And those people are going to want cars. The U.S. car parc (total registered vehicle population) right now stands at 216 million vehicles, but it's growing at about 3.5 million vehicles a year. That's nearly 10,000 more vehicles every single day.

Yet, you don't hear the auto industry talking much about this problem. Unless, of course, you go to expensive conferences at prestigious universities that publish long treatises that practically no one reads.

Contrast that approach to the plan that Boeing unveiled to the Federal Aviation Admin. last year that was splashed all over the media. Boeing proposes using on-board GPS along with other technology to increase air traffic 45% over the next 15 years at the same time it reduces delays. And Boeing says it will pay for the development of this technology itself. Why? Because it wants to avoid an air traffic crunch that would cause airplane sales to slump.

So where's the automotive equivalent to what Boeing is proposing? Are we not headed for a congestion-choked future that could cause sales of automobiles to slump? It sure looks that way. Indeed, there are some awfully smart people working at non-government organizations (NGOs) burning the midnight oil trying to figure out how to get people out of their cars. And they're committed to achieving it. They don't like cars.

The challenge to the auto industry is that this is a problem that increases a little bit every year. You add a few minutes here and a few minutes there, so you don't really see it happening. It's not like someone dropping an anvil on your foot.

The auto industry better show some leadership on this issue unless it wants to see the NGOs take the lead and lead it around by the nose. Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see much action from the car companies until it's too late.

After all, if you don't care about the sorry state that your local roads are in today, why worry about tomorrow?

John McElroy is editorial director of Blue Sky Productions and producer of “Autoline Detroit” for WTVS-Channel 56, Detroit.