‘Oil and Common Sense’

We wish to congratulate you on your editorial--a timely, positive approach to the economics of our time. However, we do have reservations.

We look at the economics of oil and transportation from the viewpoint of the competition between automobiles and public transit for commuter patronage. At present the playing field is gravely tilted in favor of automobiles.

The 24 cents per gallon of Rep. Anthony Beilenson’s (D-Los Angeles) proposal is just about enough to reimburse our cities for the huge shortfall in their cost vs. income account with the motorist. It does not pay the community for the enormous costs of free parking and operating space provided by public and private institutions. These are many times as much.

The nationwide costs of this subsidy to motoring is measured in hundreds of billions annually, dwarfing welfare and other social programs, matched in magnitude only by the defense budget. But its most egregious effect is the diversion of household savings. These go, instead, to the purchase and operation of automobiles because cheapness is added to intrinsic charm and utility. The market mechanism is distorted by masking real costs.

Our rates of household savings and industrial investment are markedly low as compared to those of Japan and Germany. We believe that American inability to compete, even on our own turf, is a direct result of excessive American preoccupation with automobiles and trucks. And that this follows from an unfair taxation policy.

The Beilenson proposal is a significant step, but only a beginning, toward correcting this serious economic imbalance.

STANLEY HART

Altadena

Hart is chairman of the Transportation Committee of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club.