Michael Replogle

Sustainable Transportation Strategies for Third World Development

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Motorization and Global Development

To understand the forces influencing transportation development in the Third World, it is helpful to understand some of the mechanisms that shaped transport system evolution in countries like the United States.

Transportation policy and investments in the U.S., especially since the middle of this century, have been controlled through a complex technocratic planning system stacked heavily in favor of motorized transport. Over several generations, large corporate interests in the automobile, steel, petroleum, and suburban real estate industries have worked together to create demand for and dependency upon the automobile as an essential element for life in most American communities.

The ideology of motorization has been highly successful, spawning several hundred billion dollars of investments in roads in the U.S., with numerous incentives for increased automobile ownership. There is no doubt that, for a time, this program of motorization helped to fuel massive American economic growth. With the heavy penetration of foreign manufacturers into the U.S. automobile market and with continued dependency on oil imports, this sector of the domestic economy no longer promises easy prospects for growth and indeed has entered a period of adjustment with major net employment reductions.

By establishing a monopoly in the transport sector of the United States, General Motors and the oil companies have been able to generate large profits decade after decade, achieving a concentration of unprecedented amounts of economic and political power. It is well documented, but often forgotten history, that General Motors and its counterparts in the automobile-petroleum-steel-rubber industrial complex destroyed the vast interurban rail systems of the United States between 1920 and 1960. Through a variety of legal and illegal acts, these corporations attained effective control of the production of transit services and vehicles as well as automobiles (10).

We are now at a crucial time in the evolution of global transportation systems and policies. With automobile markets in the industrialized nations largely saturated, the global auto industry is today seeking to increase its penetration into new markets. To avoid the uncomfortable prospect of flat demand for their cars, the multinational automobile corporations are targeting the more advanced Asian, South American and African countries for the majority of their growth potential in the next 20 years (11). Substantial investments to support this motorization are being made by global lending institutions with the support of local elites. The basic transportation needs of the world's poor are being bypassed in this development process.

Current trends favor such growth in motorization. Major international lending institutions, corporations, and Third World elites largely favor transportation policies similar to those which led to the widespread motorization of North America. These policies emphasize --

• working to maximize subsidies and government spending to benefit motorization through effective control of transportation investment policies,
• expanding the formal transport sector while restricting, regulating, or eliminating informal transport sector activities,
• reallocating street space and infrastructure to marginalize non-motorized transportation, and
• encouraging the decapitalization of modes that offer an alternative to the automobile.

Developing countries are at a distinct disadvantage in negotiating with the corporate system about the future of their transportation systems (4). In the automobile industry, ten companies control 80% of world production and include many companies with annual revenues greater than the GNP of dozens of nations. The "Seven Sisters" of the oil industry together with these auto producers compose one of the most powerful economic blocs in the history of our global economy.

Evidence indicates that this pattern of transport development will bring in most developing countries increased inequality and structural unemployment, reduced local autonomy, a reduction of opportunity for microenterprise development, and a continuing degradation of environmental quality. The strategy of global motorization promoted under the current predominant transportation policies is not sustainable and will fail to meet the mobility needs of a vast portion of humanity.

A basic needs approach to transportation development is needed, with altered priorities from those that now dominate transport policy. A portion of the resources now devoted to providing infrastructure for heavy petroleum fueled vehicles and capital intensive technologies needs to be redirected to providing many more people with access to low cost vehicles and technologies that can be sustained in the long term, regardless of shortages of capital and fuel. The goal of transportation policies and investments should be to advance equitable socio-economic development, rather than economic development alone.

Developing countries still have a chance to avoid the mistakes made by many industrial countries in developing inefficient urban forms and creating reliance on expensive transportation systems that require imported and ultimately scarce fuels. Transportation policies and investments that benefit the poor and that enhance both self-determination and economic growth are not only possible, but will be far more sustainable in the long run than current directions for transport development, which tend to be both capital and energy intensive.