Transport Revolutions--Moving People and Freight Without Oil.(Book review)

Transport Revolutions--Moving People and Freight Without Oil, by Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl. Stylus Publishing, LLC, Herndon, Virginia. 2008. Pp. 351. ISBN-13: 9781-84407-248-4. $88.00.

The recent dramatic run-up in prices for crude oil and refined petroleum products, and the adjustments in business and personal activities that it portends, makes the timing of this book's publication most opportune. Its authors judge that world oil production likely will peak around 2012, and then decline progressively. Simultaneously, demand for oil, largely for powering freight and passenger transport, will continue to grow. Hence, petroleum prices will trend upward, perhaps steeply, accompanied by an irreversible decline in the output of petroleum products. This poses a significant challenge for providers and users of transport, given that approximately 95 percent of the world's transport as conducted today is fueled by petroleum products, mostly gasoline, diesel oil, and jet kerosene.

In the authors' view, meeting this challenge will in the long run (circa 2025) force a "'transport revolution" embodying major relatively rapid (i.e., in twenty-five years or less) changes in transport service demand and supply and in the conduct of transport-dependent business and personal activities. Leaders in the public and private sectors can choose either a reactive or proactive path to accomplish this revolution. The reactive path entails relying exclusively on increasingly higher oil prices to drive change. Absent timely anticipation and preparation, the authors opine that the change will be unduly destructive. In their worst-case scenario, automobile-dependent householders who lack access to transport alternatives and can no longer afford petroleum motor fuel "will have to abandon their homes or live at a subsistence level on what they can produce on their land." Significant shifts will occur in the location of economic activities dependent on petroleum-fueled truck transport, and international conflict will intensify as competition for declining oil supply rises among sovereign states. In sum, the authors assert that economic and social collapse will become "a real prospect" if motorized transport activity declines abruptly and markedly below levels that "humans now enjoy.'"

To avert such a catastrophe and "allow humanity to continue with at least the comfort and convenience of present arrangements and quite possibly more," the authors believe it essential that top policy makers in government soon take strong proactive leadership to prepare and execute plans for effecting an orderly shift of transport from dominant reliance on oil to "renewable resources that can be as available in the future as they are today." The authors identify electricity, a renewable resource if produced with non-fossil fuel-consuming forms of energy, as the prime substitute for petroleum fuels in road and rail transport. Replacement of internal combustion engines (ICEs) by electric motors would offer the additional benefit of reductions in air pollution, noise, and other negative externalities occasioned by ICE propulsion. Key actions in the authors' scenario for minimizing oil dependency include the following:

* Partial replacement of internal combustion-powered personal vehicles by battery-equipped electric personal vehicles (cars and two-wheelers) for approximately 50 percent of personal vehicle trips, and transition to battery-electric trucks for local-area freight movements.

* Improvements in automotive technology and higher occupancies to attain significant reductions in energy consumption per person-kilometer for ICEs remaining in use.

* Diversion of intra-urban trips from ICEs through (1) widespread introduction of electric jitneys and other forms of on-demand transport, including semi-automated electric-powered personal rapid transit, and (2) substantial expansion of traditional forms of largely electrified public transport, including trolley bus, street car, light rail, heavy rail rapid transit, and commuter rail.

* Shifts of portions of intercity traffic from road and air to rail through electrification and capacity additions on the existing main line railway network, and construction of dedicated high-speed electrified passenger rail lines in key corridors.

* Electrification of selected major highways to enable operation of electric intercity buses and track tractors drawing power from overhead wires in the same manner as urban trolley buses.

* Expansion of intercity bus service, some of it electric powered and the remainder by more fuel-efficient diesel engines.

* Confinement of domestic and international air passenger and cargo movement to aircraft of highest fuel efficiency on fewer routes of highest traffic density.

* Continued use of diesel engines in inland waterway and ocean vessels, assisted by wind power via sails and kites where feasible, and diversion of some road traffic to more fuel-efficient coastal, lake, and river ferry services.

It is likely that the radical bent of most of these proposed departures from current practice will cause them to be dismissed without serious consideration by most contemporary transport and logistics professionals, let alone policy makers and executives in the private and public sectors, orthodox neo-classical economists, and members of the public. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the authors, within the span of an introduction and six chapters, have marshaled voluminous data and information from credible sources in support of their analysis and conclusions. Also, they give serious attention to the political, administrative, economic, and financial hurdles that any effort to implement their "proactive revolution" would have to overcome. A detailed critique of the arguments and evidence presented exceeds space limits here. Suffice it to say that the critical concerns currently being aired widely about the cost, durability, and reliability of oil supply make the book's contents worthy of attention by anyone concerned about long-run strategic policy choices for both transport and energy.

John C. Spychalski, EM-AST&L Professor Emeritus of Supply Chain Management The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania 16802-3603

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