Cars and Factory Work (was Cars and Victorians)

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 10:51 AM 5/7/98 +1000, Trond Andresen wrote:
>The issue of what to do with this problem interests me. The following is a 
>letter to the editor that they printed in the Sydney Morning Herald 
>December last year. It generated some interest, and I was interviewed about 
>this proposal on a couple of ABC radio stations. But no politicians, or the 
>Road Transport Authority, did respond.
>
>Trond Andresen
>
>
>Sydney's car pollution problem -- a proposal ===============================
>
>I am a Norwegian control systems engineer on a one year sabbatical in 
>Sydney, and have been here for four months now. It seems to me that Sydney 
>has a big car traffic problem, while not yet on the level of London and 
>Mexico City.
>
>In Norway there is now discussion of rationing of the right to drive in 
>cities. The technology is available, and up and running already in a couple  
>of Norwegian cities. While it is currently used for road pricing (collecting 
>money for new motorways around and into large cities),  plans are under way 
>to employ these systems to reduce car traffic in urban areas. 

--snip --

During my previous life as a 'consultant' for the county government in
Santa Clara County (aka Silicon Valley), similar proposals to limit traffic
in the San Francisco Bay Area were floated around.  The technology they
proposed were scanners installed on bridges that are bottle necks of the
local transportation systems.

To my recollection, these proposals generated ferocious opposition from the
auto industry and no politician dared to even touch the subject.  This is
not just the political clout of the auto industry, but also the fact that
car is the sacred cow of the Homo Americanus.

BTW, a few years ago, San Jose Mercury News run an investigative report
exposing some questionable practices of the auto industry in the area.  The
industry;s response was swift and decisive, the paper apologized fearing
the loss of of advertising revenues.  Does anyone know more details on that
story?
WS