Advertisement for an Owen Magnetic, an early electric car manufactured from 1915 to 1921. Early on there were a lot of electric automobiles offered for sale before they lost out to gasoline powered vehicles.
Readers of the Tribune have probably noticed that actions by our local politicians sometimes only really show up in the news when they draw the opposition of some national body. The effort, for example, to tax retailers with multi state operations that looked like it was going to pass drew the opposition of some organization that billed itself as promoting "modern taxation", or something like that, at that point. That bill died soon thereafter, although it may be back in the coming legislative session.
In this weekend's Tribune, Wyoming Senator Barasso has drawn rare opposition from a group associated in some fashion with petroleum. The organization's nature isn't clear to me, and I'm not criticizing it (and it doesn't have a camouflaged name, to its credit) but what is clear is that its spokesman, Thomas J. Pyle, is opposed to a highway infrastructure bill that Senator Barasso sponsored which would provide 1 billion dollars in subsidies to electric car charging stations. The bill itself is a $287 billion infrastructure bill. The opposition is framed in the form of one promoting free enterprise. Mr. Pyle states, in his op-ed, the gist of his argument as follows:
Again, I'm not arguing one way or another here, but it should be obvious to everyone that transportation is already subsidized in innumerable ways. Indeed, anyone reading our series of posts on the 1919 Army transcontinental motor transport convoy will have noticed that. The trip was on the Lincoln Highway, which was nothing much more than a designation of a route at that point, but even then a lot of public money was going into it. It was mostly state money at that point, but its interesting to note how the Army was repairing and improving the road it was testing as it moved along.
Soon after that state funds for highways would become a feature of American life. Nobody today thinks of that as a subsidy, but in fact it is. It's an automobile subsidy. The country could have relied upon unimproved roads indefinitely, or it could have made the roads pay for themselves as toll roads, but it didn't. Public monies started being spent on roads in massive amounts in the 1910s and its never stopped. After World War Two Federal money came in in a massive way and that's never stopped. Wyoming may decry the influence of the Federal government on various things routinely, but we never decry receiving Federal highway dollars.
The subsidization of highways is directly harmful to another industry, the railroads. Railroad were so good in the U.S. in the 1910s that they'd actually caused prior roads, albeit wagon roads, to atrophy. But public funding for highways reversed that and harmed railroads in a way that they've never really recovered from. There's no reason at all that almost all ground interstate transportation couldn't be by rail. . . except for the subsidization of the highways.
The railroads themselves, however, were in fact subsidized early on through the provision of land grands to railroads in order to encourage them to expand. This started in the 1860s and it didn't last long, but it didn't need to as an incentive. The provision of land to railroads in the West made them rich in land to sell and in mineral rights associated with the land.
That incentivizing feature is significant here in that both the highway system and the railroad grants were designed in order to boost the industries that used them, which was thought of as beneficial to the nation. Railroads acquired eminent domain from governments and then land grands from the Federal Government as the nation wanted to promote rail transportation. Without those, it would have been very slow to advance, if it would have at all. Highways were likewise thought of as advancing the cause of transportation, something not lost on the automobile industry which even sent its own vehicles along on the 1919 convoy.
And of course, more recently we have the example of the Federal administration of air travel. That really commenced with the Air Commerce Act of 1926, but here too, it's a subsidy to air travel.
Should the government fund electric car charging stations? I don't know, but the thought is clearly to put them in places that they aren't going to get to quickly in order to boost the advancement of electric vehicles. And electric vehicles are coming. They've already reached the point where they are a very expensive alternative to fuel burning vehicles and they're out there. Ford has announced that its introducing an electric version of the F150 in the very near future. Harley Davidson has an electric motorcycle that its made and its just waiting.
Part of what everyone in the automobile industry is waiting for is the spread of charging stations. Right now, it takes about ten hours to completely recharge a depleted Tesla battery. That's probably no big deal if you are only driving your Tesla locally, but it is a big deal if you are trying to make highway miles anywhere.
There actually are more Tesla charging stations in the West than a person might suppose, including in Wyoming. To my surprise, in looking it up, there's a complete set of them along I80 and another on I25. On state highways, Riverton, Lusk and (not surprisingly) Jackson have them. So they're getting out there. Having adequate charging stations are undoubtedly a key part of the advancement of the design. Longer battery life, however, and quicker charging times, will really be the key to the real advancement of electric vehicles, but that day is very rapidly coming.
Should Congress try to speed up that advance? Well, it is, assuming that the bill makes it through Congress. A person can of course debate whether the subsidy is a good thing or not, and why it is a good thing or not. But in Pyle's conclusion, there's something missing:
_________________________________________________________________________________
*E85 is a type of Ethanol, and Ethanol has been subsidized by the Federal Government in the past. Legislation is what made ethanol as common as it now is as a fuel.
In this weekend's Tribune, Wyoming Senator Barasso has drawn rare opposition from a group associated in some fashion with petroleum. The organization's nature isn't clear to me, and I'm not criticizing it (and it doesn't have a camouflaged name, to its credit) but what is clear is that its spokesman, Thomas J. Pyle, is opposed to a highway infrastructure bill that Senator Barasso sponsored which would provide 1 billion dollars in subsidies to electric car charging stations. The bill itself is a $287 billion infrastructure bill. The opposition is framed in the form of one promoting free enterprise. Mr. Pyle states, in his op-ed, the gist of his argument as follows:
Fundamentally, taxpayers should not be paying for private infrastructure. Where there is a need for electric vehicle infrastructure, private companies can provide it. Electric vehicles should be no exception.He goes on to make these points:
It should be obvious that subsidizing retail outlets for a particular product is not a proper role for government, but since we seem to be heading in that direction, let’s look at it in other contexts.
Should federal taxpayers subsidize the construction of gas stations? After all, the vast majority of cars are gasoline-powered.
Or, speaking of niche products, should we subsidize the construction of E85 pumps, which can dispense fuel with up to 85 percent ethanol? There are far more flex-fuel capable vehicles on the road than there are electric vehicles.
I'm not going to comment on this particular subsidy one way or another. People can make up their own minds about that. But the thing I think is interesting here is the degree to which Americans disassociate the subsidization of transportation infrastructure from their stated beliefs about the "free market". Indeed, I've often thought that Americans support the free market, except where it applies to them personally, in which case whatever it is should be free. Automobile transportation, which is what Mr. Pyle is addressing, already is subsidized, although not in the fashion he noted (although on E85, that was the product of a type of subsidization).*Or more speculatively, compressed natural gas is a potential transportation fuel, so why not include that as well?
Again, I'm not arguing one way or another here, but it should be obvious to everyone that transportation is already subsidized in innumerable ways. Indeed, anyone reading our series of posts on the 1919 Army transcontinental motor transport convoy will have noticed that. The trip was on the Lincoln Highway, which was nothing much more than a designation of a route at that point, but even then a lot of public money was going into it. It was mostly state money at that point, but its interesting to note how the Army was repairing and improving the road it was testing as it moved along.
Soon after that state funds for highways would become a feature of American life. Nobody today thinks of that as a subsidy, but in fact it is. It's an automobile subsidy. The country could have relied upon unimproved roads indefinitely, or it could have made the roads pay for themselves as toll roads, but it didn't. Public monies started being spent on roads in massive amounts in the 1910s and its never stopped. After World War Two Federal money came in in a massive way and that's never stopped. Wyoming may decry the influence of the Federal government on various things routinely, but we never decry receiving Federal highway dollars.
The subsidization of highways is directly harmful to another industry, the railroads. Railroad were so good in the U.S. in the 1910s that they'd actually caused prior roads, albeit wagon roads, to atrophy. But public funding for highways reversed that and harmed railroads in a way that they've never really recovered from. There's no reason at all that almost all ground interstate transportation couldn't be by rail. . . except for the subsidization of the highways.
The railroads themselves, however, were in fact subsidized early on through the provision of land grands to railroads in order to encourage them to expand. This started in the 1860s and it didn't last long, but it didn't need to as an incentive. The provision of land to railroads in the West made them rich in land to sell and in mineral rights associated with the land.
That incentivizing feature is significant here in that both the highway system and the railroad grants were designed in order to boost the industries that used them, which was thought of as beneficial to the nation. Railroads acquired eminent domain from governments and then land grands from the Federal Government as the nation wanted to promote rail transportation. Without those, it would have been very slow to advance, if it would have at all. Highways were likewise thought of as advancing the cause of transportation, something not lost on the automobile industry which even sent its own vehicles along on the 1919 convoy.
And of course, more recently we have the example of the Federal administration of air travel. That really commenced with the Air Commerce Act of 1926, but here too, it's a subsidy to air travel.
Should the government fund electric car charging stations? I don't know, but the thought is clearly to put them in places that they aren't going to get to quickly in order to boost the advancement of electric vehicles. And electric vehicles are coming. They've already reached the point where they are a very expensive alternative to fuel burning vehicles and they're out there. Ford has announced that its introducing an electric version of the F150 in the very near future. Harley Davidson has an electric motorcycle that its made and its just waiting.
Part of what everyone in the automobile industry is waiting for is the spread of charging stations. Right now, it takes about ten hours to completely recharge a depleted Tesla battery. That's probably no big deal if you are only driving your Tesla locally, but it is a big deal if you are trying to make highway miles anywhere.
There actually are more Tesla charging stations in the West than a person might suppose, including in Wyoming. To my surprise, in looking it up, there's a complete set of them along I80 and another on I25. On state highways, Riverton, Lusk and (not surprisingly) Jackson have them. So they're getting out there. Having adequate charging stations are undoubtedly a key part of the advancement of the design. Longer battery life, however, and quicker charging times, will really be the key to the real advancement of electric vehicles, but that day is very rapidly coming.
Should Congress try to speed up that advance? Well, it is, assuming that the bill makes it through Congress. A person can of course debate whether the subsidy is a good thing or not, and why it is a good thing or not. But in Pyle's conclusion, there's something missing:
So, if you see Sen. Barrasso at the coffee shop this summer, tell him to pull the plug on the giveaway for electric vehicle charging stations. We shouldn’t let the Democrats inject their Green New Deal into the highway bill.And that thing would be, if we're already subsidizing transportation massively, favoring ground road transportation over everything else, and favoring retaining viable air service, shouldn't we at least recognize that?
_________________________________________________________________________________
*E85 is a type of Ethanol, and Ethanol has been subsidized by the Federal Government in the past. Legislation is what made ethanol as common as it now is as a fuel.
No comments:
Post a Comment