Biden On the Move

I don't mean Joe Biden's poll numbers. I mean his transportation policy.

Joe Biden is a big car buff.  He owns a 1967 Corvette (as seen above) that he loves to take out on the road.  It's one of his most prized possessions.  He's also a big Amtrak supporter, having taken the national passenger railroad to work when he was a United States Senator.  So he knows how much we need public transit to get around and how much it would benefit the economy if we had more regional rail transit as well as a modernized Amtrak on par with the bullet-train networks of France and Japan.  But because he loves cars - and because he brags about having been instrumental in saving General Motors (his mantra from the 2012 presidential campaign when he ran for a second term as Obama's Vice President - "Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive!") - no one can say he's out to take away people's cars.

But I won't be surprised if he takes away your Ford F-150 unless you need it for your job.  Nor would I be surprised if you might have to buy an inexpensive small hatchback or pay more than you already have to to buy a sport utility vehicle.  Biden also believes in fighting climate change, and among automobiles, gasoline-powered vehicles made on light-truck platforms are the worst offenders.  And it you do get a monster wagon, it's going to have to be electric.  Biden is advocating development of electric vehicles as a more sustainable alternative to gasoline-powered cars and trucks, and auto companies in both the U.S. and in other countries are already responding with such product - and electric vehicles are becoming less expensive as time goes on. That big, fossil-fuel-powered SUV you have is set to become as obsolete as that old sedan with the CD player you gave to your kid when he or she got a driver's license.  And if you want a pickup truck, I think you'd better have a carpenter's or plumber's license to avoid paying a gas-guzzler tax, because it's not a big leap of imagination to expect Biden to bring back Barack Obama's tough fuel-economy standards - the jettisoning of which by Trump is probably a reason Ford got rid of its fuel-efficient compacts.     

Biden is the most engaged presidential candidate on transportation issues since Michael Dukakis, because cars and trains are a personal passion of his - just like they are with me - and he knows what he has to do to make cars and public transit sustainable and affordable to give Americans freedom of mobility in an environmentally conscious world.  That's why he's against giving out more permits for fracking.  And while he has said he will not ban fracking where the practice is already operating . . .  trust me, with fracking going bust on its own, he won't have to.  We're moving on from oil and gas shale and going green.