Published September 27, 2004; Page A03


People who live in sprawling communities tend to suffer more health problems, according to the first study to document a link between the world of strip malls, cul-de-sacs and subdivisions and a broad array of ailments.


The study, which analyzed data on more than 8,600 Americans in 38 metropolitan areas -- including the Washington region -- found that rates of arthritis, asthma, headaches and other complaints increased with the degree of sprawl. Living in areas with the least amount of sprawl, compared with living in areas with the most, was like adding about four years to people's lives in terms of their health, the study found.


"Suburban sprawl affects your health," said Roland Sturm, a senior economist at the Rand Corp. of Santa Monica, Calif., who led the study, which is being released today. "That's really the take-home message."


As suburbia has spread across the American landscape, health experts have become increasingly concerned that the fast-food, car-dependent lifestyle may be contributing to a host of health problems. Previous studies have linked sprawl to an increased risk of being overweight and obese and certain related health problems, such as high blood pressure. The new study, published in the journal Public Health, is the first to directly examine the relationship between sprawl and a wide spectrum of chronic illnesses.


"This is the first one where we assess a whole set of conditions," Sturm said. "That's the new angle."


The increase in health problems is presumably due to the fact that sprawl discourages physical activity, increasing the chances of being overweight or obese. In addition, sprawling communities tend to have more air pollution, Sturm said.


"This really seems to be due mainly to air pollution and physical activity," Sturm said.


Sturm and colleague Deborah Cohen analyzed data collected by Healthcare for Communities, a survey that in 1998 and 2001 questioned a nationally representative sample of 8,686 adults in 38 areas about a range of health issues. The researchers then examined whether there was an association between 16 health problems and the amount of sprawl where participants lived, using a scale that includes such measures as population density, street patterns and proximity of businesses and workplaces to residences.


The least compact community was the Riverside-San Bernardino area in California, while the most was Manhattan. The Washington area ranked 15th most sprawling; Baltimore ranked the ninth least sprawling.


People living in areas that scored highest on the sprawl scale reported the most problems, with the unhealthful effects appearing to disproportionately affect the poor and the elderly. The association was particularly significant with arthritis, respiratory problems such as asthma, stomach problems, headaches and urinary tract infections. But the researchers also found some evidence of an association with heart disease and high blood pressure.


Very spread out places, such as Atlanta, had about 100 more health problems per 1,000 people than areas that were less so, such as the Greensboro-Winston Salem area of North Carolina. Washington had about 50 more health problems per 1,000 people than Baltimore, Sturm said.


Although some researchers have speculated that the social isolation that can occur in sprawling communities may also lead to more mental health problems, such as depression, the new study failed to find that link.


"We find a strong association on the physical health side, but surprisingly not on the mental health side," Sturm said in a telephone interview.


Other researchers praised the study, saying it adds to evidence that suggests the physical attributes of where a person lives can have a significant impact on their health.


"It's the first study to aggressively assess systematic relations between health outcomes and the built environment," said Lawrence D. Frank of the University of British Columbia, who studies sprawl.


"This is still a very new field of research, but every significant study that has come out so far has reached a similar conclusion," said Don Chen, executive director of Smart Growth America, a Washington-based advocacy group. "This may be a promising way to begin addressing some of these chronic health issues."


But critics dismissed the findings, saying the study was flawed and the link between sprawl and health was tenuous at best.


"I remain a skeptic of the research, in part because the results they find are weak," said Samuel R. Staley, a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based libertarian group. "This study seems particularly prone to spurious results -- results that are statistically related but really don't tell us much about causes."


Peter Gordon, a professor in the school of policy, planning and development at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles agreed, calling the study "junk science." The areas studied, for example, are so large they could not distinguish important neighborhood differences, he said.


"Describing places this large via a simple ad hoc 'sprawl' index is nuts," Gordon wrote in an e-mail. "People have been suburbanizing for a very long time. Yet, life expectancy keeps getting longer."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52470-2004Sep26.html

Published Sept. 25


California regulators approved a plan on Friday aimed at drastically reducing over the next 11 years the vehicle emissions of gases that scientists have linked to global warming.


It would be the first such regulation in the nation and one that, if it survives legal challenges, would force automakers to increase sharply the fuel efficiency of millions of vehicles.


Though the plan is being put into place by only one state, automakers see it as the most challenging demand from government since Congress first imposed standards to improve fuel economy in the 1970's. California is by far the nation's largest auto market, accounting for a fifth of national sales.


Industry officials said the plan would lead them to restrict sales of large sport utility vehicles and high- performance sports cars in the state. Regulators, including the state's staff of engineers, sharply disputed that and said the industry already had much of the technology to comply on the shelf or, in the case of gas-electric hybrid cars, on the road.


With seven other states in the East following California's lead on air quality regulations, the plan could potentially affect about 30 percent of the market. That would present automakers with tough choices about whether to build different vehicles for different markets or develop a unified nationwide strategy to meet the demands of California and the other states.


A representative from New York reiterated on Thursday the state's support for California's measure.


But the plan still faces an expected legal challenge on multiple fronts from automakers and could also be blocked by the Bush administration. For years, the industry has tied up previous state efforts to regulate air quality, but regulators say that they have learned from those battles and that they believe they will prevail in court.


Automakers, in sometimes combative testimony, strongly opposed the measure, saying it would be far more expensive than the state projected and that regulators are straying far beyond their traditional role of curbing local air pollution.


The industry also dismissed as unproved the board staff's presentation of a broad overview of scientific evidence on the health effects of global warming.


The regulation would require the industry to cut roughly 30 percent of the carbon dioxide and other emissions scientists have linked to climate change trends. The standards would phase in from the 2009 to the 2016 model years, with each automaker's annual new car and truck offerings required to meet increasingly stringent limits.


But the industry said critics sharply underestimated the costs of meeting the standard. The board's staff projected that the regulation would add about $1,000 to the initial cost of an average new vehicle but that gasoline savings over time would more than make up for that. The industry said it would cost an extra $3,000, much more than the potential fuel savings.


The board's staff gave some ground, but not much, modifying its cost savings projections to $2,142 from $2,691 - fuel savings minus higher upfront costs.


On Friday, after two days of hearing, the state Air Resources Board, which is appointed by the Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, voted 8 to 0 to approve the plan.


"California cannot solve this problem of global climate change by itself,'' said Alan C. Lloyd, chairman of the air board, "but we can certainly do our share."


Thomas C. Austin, the industry's top research consultant on this regulation, said, "It's the most challenging regulation that's ever been proposed by the California Air Resources Board, or even the E.P.A."


Even companies that have long been leaders in improving fuel efficiency raised questions about the plan. "We don't know how to do it right now,'' said John German, Honda's manager of environment and energy analysis. "It means using unknown, unproven technology."


The board, along with environmentalists, said the auto industry offered no alternatives, no cooperation and had a history of understating what it could do.


"We have wanted to work with the auto companies, and we have got nothing coming back in return," Mr. Lloyd said during the hearing.


John DeCicco, an engineer and a senior fellow at Environmental Defense, said, "Vehicles are not going to be different in ways that matter to consumers."


While other nations have moved to curb automotive emissions of global warming gases, previous domestic air quality regulations have for decades been focused on a different kind of emission, the smog-forming particles that have been particularly damaging in California.


Those smog-forming emissions can be filtered with a catalytic converter.


But no such filtration technology exists for global warming gases; automakers say that they would have to increase their average fuel economy in the state by 35 to 50 percent within 11 years to meet the standard, a pace not seen since the United States first started regulating fuel economy in the 1970's.


For more than a decade, fuel economy gains have stalled as the price of gasoline moderated and consumers flocked to sport utility vehicles.


The board's staff presented a broad overview of recent scientific research, which it said showed how the warming of the planet has already contributed to a variety of health problems.


In California, rising temperatures would bring a variety of specific risks, the board staff said. Higher temperatures impede the state's battle with smog and can worsen forest fires. They also contribute to the early melting of mountain snow, which can lead to winter flooding and less water runoff for crop irrigation in the spring, threatening the state's $3.2 billion wine industry.


The board staff also said that rising sea levels, another symptom of the problem, threaten coastlines and could contaminate the state's supply of fresh water.


"The patient here is the earth and its habitants," said an air board member, Dr. Henry Gong, the chief of environmental health service at the Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center. "The treatment option is here before us today."


A top auto industry lobbyist brushed aside the presentation, calling the theory of global warming "a big if."


The lobbyist, Fred Webber, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a lobbying group that includes Toyota, General Motors and all of the major international automakers except Nissan and Honda, said in a statement: "Californians would see no health benefits under this regulation."


He added in an interview during a break at the hearing: "I come from Maine and we had one of the coldest winters on record. It was very, very cold. A lot of people are scratching their beans about whether global warming is occurring. It's a question worth addressing, but on a global basis."


Several legal hurdles remain before the plan could take effect. Lawsuits are expected from the industry, which could sue in state court claiming the proposal does not meet mandated feasibility requirements. The industry could also sue in federal court, claiming that the plan is pre-empted by Washington's authority to regulate fuel economy.


The board has emphasized that the plan is aimed at global warming, not fuel economy directly, and environmentalists have pointed out that emissions can also be modestly reduced by making changes to a car's air-conditioning system.


The Bush administration could also reject California's petition to regulate global warming emissions. California and several other states are already suing the E.P.A., which does not consider global warming gases to be pollutants.


Last year, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler dropped a lawsuit over California's zero-emission-vehicle mandate, a regulation that will require automakers to have 10 percent of their new vehicles meet a variety of stringent smog-forming emission targets. The industry and the state wrangled for years over the proposal, which was first put in place in 1990.


California has unique authority to regulate air pollution, because its air quality regulations predated the federal Clean Air Act.


Other states have the option of following California's regulations over Washington's. This year, New Jersey, Rhode Islands and Connecticut have said they intend to start following California's car rules; New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine already do.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/25/business/25clean.html

Sept. 20 issue -


Jim Boon is a hybrid kind of guy. He drives a Toyota hybrid to work, a Honda hybrid on weekends, and as a manager for Seattle's public transportation system, he recently placed the world's largest order for hybrid electric buses.


Now, with the biggest hybrid bus fleet in the world, Seattle has become the main testing ground for a technology that claims it can drastically cut air pollution and fuel consumption. In the late 1990s, small demo fleets of 35 buses or less started cropping up in cities such as Tempe, Arizona. Sixteen of these early hybrids still service Genoa, Italy, where drivers switch from diesel to electric power when passing the city's downtown architectural treasures. But no city has gone as far as Seattle, which last year bought 235 GM hybrid buses at $645,000 a pop. When the final one hits the streets this December, the region's bus system will be 15 percent hybrid.


But why Seattle, and why now? The Pacific Northwest has long been a hotbed of both crunchy green politics and cutting-edge technology. Fourteen years ago, the Seattle area bought 236 Italian-made Breda buses to service a kilometer-long downtown tunnel. They were supposed to operate as clean and silent electric trolleys underground, but the switching mechanism often failed and "the bus drove through the tunnel as a diesel," says Boon. "It was pretty loud and smoky."


When the Bredas hit mandatory retirement age in 2002, Boon went shopping. He chose the GM model because it uses an automatic transmission and diesel boosts that provide the power needed to scale inclines without strain. In hilly Seattle, the prospect of a hybrid that could climb like a diesel but accelerate without belching black fumes helped justify its price, which is about $200,000 higher than a conventional bus. "The days of seeing a diesel pull away and pour out smoke are over," says Boon. "After we drove these hybrid buses across the country, I wiped a handkerchief inside the tailpipe. It came out spotless. I bet there are tables in your living room that are dirtier."


Experts say buses are critical to realizing the hybrid dream of greater efficiency and cleaner air. It would take thousands of hybrid cars to save as many liters of gas (3.4 million) as Boon expects his buses to save Seattle each year. GM claims that compared to conventional diesels, its hybrids also churn out 90 percent less particulate matter—a known carcinogen. "Buses are a major source of pollution in any city," says Dave Kircher of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. "They operate where people are breathing this exhaust, so this is major step forward in terms of emissions."


And a major step forward in the marketplace: Philadelphia; Honolulu; Long Beach, California; and Albuquerque, New Mexico have all bought the GM buses in recent months. GM has launched an ad campaign called All Aboard the Magic Bus, touting itself as the top hybrid bus innovator. But the game is heating up: Siemens is among the global giants dueling GM for new business, and New York plans to deploy 325 BAE Systems hybrids by 2006. "There's room for competition," says James Cannon, editor of Hybrid Vehicles newsletter. Seems Seattle isn't the only city trying to leave grunge behind.


URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5963499/site/newsweek/

Sept. 20 issue -


Yu Zhuoping hasn't taken a vacation in two years. Nor does the 44-year-old take many weekends off. Instead he logs 12-hour days in a soccer-pitch-size laboratory filled with flashing computer screens and disemboweled electric motors. He's trying to build the future—in the form of hydrogen-powered cars that can not only work, but can sell. Since Yu's team of 28 Ph.D.-level scientists and 200 students at Shanghai's Tongji University began the work in 2002, they've come out with two generations of cars—built with Chinese technology.


"That's something that nobody thought we could do," he says, glancing out from under the silver hood of Start II, the project's newest prototype. "Now people say we won't be able to make them marketable. So we'll just keep working."


In China such optimism is par for the course. Beijing is undaunted in its ambitions to become a world leader in hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered cars. The dream is not farfetched. Making hydrogen cars a reality is only partly a matter of coming up with technological breakthroughs. It also involves replacing gasoline filling stations, refineries and internal-combustion engines with hydrogen equivalents. China's relative lack of development may thus be a virtue; the country's leadership has a relatively clean slate upon which to build a hydrogen-car industry, should it choose to do so.


If the technology could be made cost-competitive with fossil fuels—which many analysts predict will happen in the next two decades—hydrogen cars would make sense as a national strategy. By making China the world's biggest market for hydrogen cars, Beijing could attract investment in the latest technology and bootstrap a world-class Chinese auto industry, reducing China's demand for imported oil in the bargain. Of course, there's a sizable industry that is pushing the country in the opposite direction, toward fast growth using quick and dirty conventional technology and fuels—and even fighting against tighter emissions controls than in the West.


Which strategy China chooses stands to have a huge impact on the country—and on the rest of the world. At present, the Middle Kingdom is traversed by relatively few cars—only about 20 million. That amounts to barely eight cars per 1,000 people, which is a far cry from the 100 in Brazil or the 940 in the United States. China is catching up quickly, however. At its current rate of growth, the country will surpass Japan and become the world's second largest auto market by 2011, with annual sales of 5 million cars, says Yale Zhang, a research director for the consulting firm CSM Worldwide. China, already the world's second largest importer of oil, would have to double imports every seven or eight years to keep all these wheels spinning, says James Brock, an energy consultant in Beijing. By steering China toward more fuel-efficient hybrid cars as a precursor to a hydrogen-based auto industry, Beijing would take a giant step toward curbing greenhouse-gas emissions and reducing the worldwide demand for oil. It would also give the big carmakers an incentive to develop similar vehicles for the China market.


A coterie of engineers are working to make that happen. They've got a good deal of support from Beijing, which has pumped nearly $200 million into fuel-cell research in the past two years. (The United States plans to spend $1.7 billion over five years.) Wan Gang, the chief scientist in charge of China's electric-vehicles project, expects funding to increase "several-fold" in coming years. The money has been parceled out to Chinese universities and local industries that have so far produced more than 1,000 patent applications and created a domestic capacity to build hybrid cars and fuel-cell buses. Chinese President Hu Jintao and other top leaders "definitely talk about sustainable growth, energy efficiency and environment-friendly vehicle technology," says David Chen, general manager of GM's Beijing office. And the talk isn't just rhetoric. The government funds a program to develop electric cars, with more than half its $320 million, five-year budget going toward fuel-cell R&D. "The Chinese government," says Wan, "will go to all lengths to make fuel-cell cars work."


Beijing has already begun to create an alternative-energy-vehicle fleet of buses. The central Yangtze port city of Wuhan runs several hybrid buses and, Wan says, city officials are planning to buy more. Beijing's public-transportation armada includes 120 pure-battery buses. Beijing and Shanghai plan to build hydrogen fueling stations next year. That will help them when it comes time to convert the country's 190,000 natural-gas taxis and buses, one of the world's biggest natural-gas fleets, to hydrogen.


State-funded R&D centers are also spinning off for-profit companies that would export hydrogen-technology-based products. Ouyang Minggao, director of China's National Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, also heads the start-up company SinoHytec, launched by Tsinghua University, China's MIT. SinoHytec plans to start building fuel-cell buses, with a plan to sell them by 2010.


If companies like SinoHytec are profitable, they could create a big enough market to drop the price of fuel cells and to finance an infrastructure of hydrogen fueling stations. That, Tongji's Yu says, would make a fuel-cell-vehicle market possible by pushing the price of domestically produced fuel-cell cars down to about $42,000 per automobile. The government, he says, would help out by creating a "favorable marketplace" with incentives for fuel-cell- car buyers. Tongji's for-profit start-up, Shanghai FCV Powertrain, expects to sell 250,000 fuel-cell cars by 2020.


Before that happens, though, China will have to overcome some formidable technical obstacles. Most difficult will be reducing the cost and increasing the life spans of fuel cells themselves. If fuel-cell buses went on the market today, they'd cost at least $1 million and could travel only 200 kilometers between fill-ups. Enough fuel-cell batteries to run a bus would cost roughly $100,000. There's also the problem of storing and transporting hydrogen safely and affordably. Some are skeptical about whether China will be able to pull off the conversion. "In a lab you can show that [the technology] is working in one experiment," says a Western auto executive based in Beijing. "But taking that to selling it at Kmart is a different thing."


China won't have to go it alone, thanks to a bevy of international companies eager to bring new technology to the mainland. GM joint-venture partner Shanghai Automotive Industry is working with Tongji University, and Toyota is considering producing its hybrid car, Prius, on the mainland. Palcan Fuel Cells, one of the world's top manufacturers of hydrogen storage tanks, hopes to partner with Tongji's FCV Powertrain to build fuel-cell scooters for export to Europe. For the moment, Palcan's two China-based manufacturing plants are for export only. But, Canadian-Chinese CEO John Shen says, "In the long term, China will be our top market."


Perhaps the biggest barrier to China's hydrogen strategy is the country's existing auto and fossil-fuel lobby, which has a big stake in the status quo. Despite all the green rhetoric in Beijing, China is building big highways and lining them with gas stations. Although China recently tightened its fuel-economy standards, emissions standards remain lax. Indeed, one of the tragedies of China's pell-mell development is that the country hasn't carefully considered the social costs of its growth model. Rather than encouraging private car ownership, China could have chosen to promote public transit, heavily tax road use and put surcharges on gas to avoid the pitfalls encountered by the United States. Yet so far it hasn't.


In the next few years, China's hydrogen proponents will be pressing their case. Hydrogen, they argue, may be a matter of survival. For one thing, the nation's growing demand for oil poses a national-security risk. Developing a hydrogen-based economy would relieve that pressure. China's growing environmental problems are another argument for developing hydrogen. Rapid growth has made Chinese metropolises some of the world's dirtiest. Car emissions are the No. 1 culprit, and a switch to hydrogen fuel cells—which emit no pollutants—would solve much of the problem.


The most convincing argument may be success. Yu and his team of researchers are due to finish their third-generation prototype of the Start fuel-cell car, built in a Volkswagen Santana body that the company donated, later this year. It will be lighter and more durable than its predecessor, which Yu says will make it "more marketable." After they get that done, they'll turn to Start IV. "We have the spirit to succeed," Yu says. If China does, the whole world will know it.


URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5963498/site/newsweek/

Sept. 20 issue -


Richard Pearce has turned out his old love, a 1989 Dodge pickup truck. In 2002 the 50-year-old retired soldier and his wife decided to bring a Toyota Prius hybrid back to their Virginia home. They "fell in love with the technology," which uses an electric motor at low speeds and a small engine at high speeds to power the car with a lot less gas. Now a new, 2004 Prius sits in the garage alongside the older model, and the pickup languishes in the driveway, used sparingly to haul garbage to the landfill. Pearce says he'd never think of taking the truck on his 26-mile commute. It gets less than 20 miles a gallon, while the Prius gets 60, so he wouldn't be able to use the special lane Virginia has set up for fuel-efficient cars. "We'll never have anything but a hybrid again," he says.


Pearce's extreme embrace of the Prius was once the stuff of wild dreams for the Toyota engineers who developed the brand. They had hoped the gas-electric hybrid, introduced in Japan in 1997, would become nothing less than a new Corolla or Camry—sedans that made the company's reputation in America. Last year sales of those two models helped push Toyota past Ford to become the world's second largest carmaker, laying huge tire tracks for the unproven Prius to fill. The first hybrids sold at such a high premium over regular sedans that buyers couldn't save enough on fuel to come out ahead—yet were so expensive to make, Toyota took a big loss on each one. While Toyota's engineers made grand statements about the car of the future, its bean counters wondered whether there would ever be a mainstream market for these things.


The answer has caught Toyota off guard. Since October, Toyota has had to increase production of the Prius three times, most dramatically in August when it announced a 50 percent boost for next year to 15,000 vehicles a month worldwide. That's a fraction of its Corolla output, but enough to raise serious questions about whether Toyota innovations are once again leading a major revolution in the American market. While the automaker plans to send most of the new production run to the United States, there are still 22,000 customers on waiting lists for the car. "We didn't know how the consumers would react to this technology," says Don Esmond, a senior vice president and general manager at Toyota. "They've voted for it, they've voted with their dollars."


To be sure, the hybrid phenomenon is still only a ripple in the pool of American gas guzzlers. The highest estimates for the United States predict annual sales of 500,000 hybrid cars by 2009—about 3 percent of the 16.7 million car market. Analysts think that the price of fuel would have to hit $3 a gallon to see bigger sales sooner. Yet already the Prius is the first significant departure from the combustion engine to make any major inroads in the auto industry since Henry Ford invented the Model T in 1908. And major carmakers have learned never to ignore the ambitions of Toyota, arguably the best-run big automobile company in the world, with a reported stock-market value of $107 billion, almost four times more than GM or Ford. "For Toyota," says prominent Japanese car critic and environmental-technology specialist Tadashi Tateuchi, the hybrid car "may well be the key to world domination."


The key to the Prius story is rapidly advancing technology. The original project was launched in 1993 under the code name G21, for 21st Century Generation, with strong backing from Toyota chairman Shoichirou Toyoda, an heir of the founder. When the first Prius was unveiled seven years ago, it was an undersized, underpowered and overpriced experimental box of a car, which competitors felt free to ignore. Most rivals said they would concentrate on fuel cells and other fuel-efficient technology that wouldn't be widely available until 2010. When Toyota introduced the Prius to North America in 2000, it sold only 15,000 cars its first year—a minor hit, but mainly with environmentalists and Hollywood liberals like Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz.


Toyota's napping rivals had given it a five- to 10-year technological lead by the time the new Prius came out last October, says Tateuchi. The new model's electric motor was 50 percent more powerful, its interior was almost twice as roomy and its body was designed to look like a futuristic sedan rather than an ecological-science project. The redesign cost Toyota untold millions, and putting that much into a product that "consumers didn't even know they wanted yet," says Esmond, was "a bit of a crapshoot."


The new Prius appears to be moving rapidly out of its green niche. Sales in the United States shot up by 153 percent in the first half of this year, by a whopping 874 percent in Europe; in Japan they increased tenfold. According to Esmond, once skeptical rivals are now jumping on the bandwagon. "I don't want to say they're scrambling, but they are trying to quickly put together their own hybrids," he says.


So far Honda has given Toyota the only competition for the hybrid market with the Civic and the Insight. But the first hybrid SUV, Ford's Escape, hits the streets in September. Nissan recently announced that its hybrid Altima sedan will arrive next year. Later this year Dodge plans to roll out a diesel-electric pickup. GM plans hybrid —models of the GMC Sierra and the Chevy Silverado. Honda plans to unveil a hybridized Accord in the fall. Hyundai says its hybrid will be ready in "the near future." According to CSM Worldwide, a Detroit-based research firm, by 2007 there will be some 22 hybrid options for popular models, including even Hummer's H2.


In America the lust for the largest gas guzzlers seems to be slowly waning. Though SUVs are still the top-selling vehicles, the mix of SUVs is tilting toward smaller models. And because big SUVs have driven the average gas mileage of the American fleet down to 20.4 miles per gallon, its lowest level in two decades, the Big Four automakers risk falling afoul of fuel-efficiency regulations. That's one reason many of the new American hybrid designs are for SUV models. But the bigger reason is Toyota. "We can't just sit here as a major corporation and say, 'Trust us, you'll get a fuel cell from us and in the meantime, we're not doing anything'," says GM vice chair-?man Bob Lutz. "With more and more of our competitors playing the hybrid card, there was just no way we could ignore that."


Europe has been slower to respond. It has already chosen diesel as its cleaner, more efficient fuel, and the diesel market is dominated by German carmakers. Indeed, one reason Toyota pursued hybrids was that it was so far behind in the diesel market. But growing sales of the new Prius could change all that. Lindsay Brooke, an analyst at CSM, says every big car company has to be thinking that "if the Japanese kick-start this thing, you've got to have this technology on the shelf, especially if the fuel price really rises."


The Prius faces two critical turning points before it can be called a true mass-market car. It needs to be profitable, and practical. When Toyota first introduced the Prius, it was reportedly losing $3,000 on each car. The company now says the line is profitable, but analysts aren't convinced. "I know engineers at rival carmakers who've done total teardowns of the Prius—comprehensive, bolt-by-bolt cost analysis," says Brooke. "Toyota is getting close to breaking even," probably within the next five years.


Reaching that point takes longer for the consumer. Most hybrids sell for $2, 000 to $3,000 more than comparable sedans, and drivers would need at least 10 years and 100,000 miles to recoup that much in gas savings, analysts say. But those who say hybrids must narrow that gap to boost sales ignore the power of instant gratification: Richard Pearce says he pays $10 a week in gas, compared with his neighbor's $60.


Last year Toyota launched a U.S. ad campaign pitching the Prius as a big, sexy "real car," not a green techno curiosity. One spot called Prius "the world's biggest hybrid," and showed the universe being sucked into the car's yawning rear hatch. The ad also noted that "you never plug it in"—an attempt to distance the Prius from old electric cars. A Toyota ad this summer billed "mpg" as more peaceful getaways, over a picture of a scantily clad couple on the beach.


It's also worth noting how much attention Toyota is focusing on hybrid technology. Toyota is posting record sales and building a cash reserve of more than $40 billion while other carmakers are struggling. "They could eat a number of other car manufacturers for lunch without even noticing it on their balance sheet," says auto analyst Ryan Tutak at Ducker Worldwide. Yet Toyota has avoided the recent frenzy of industry mergers and instead focused on key models, including hybrids. A hybrid luxury SUV will appear next year and a hybrid Camry in 2006. "Ford and GM have more brands than anyone, but Toyota is piling up the money," says Tutak. "Which horse are you going to bet on?" For Toyota at least, hybrids look like a winner.

With Keith Naughton in Detroit, Masato Kawaguchi in Tokyo and Bureau Reports




http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5963500/site/newsweek/

Published Sept. 9, 2004


In the first long-term study of the effects of air pollution on children, researchers reported Wednesday that children and teenagers in Southern California communities with higher levels of air pollution were more likely to have diminished lung function.


In their study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, James Gauderman of the University of Southern California and his colleagues followed 1,759 children ages 10 to 18 in a dozen Southern California communities. The pollutants they considered came primarily from car exhaust, they said.


The investigators found that 7.9 percent of the 18-year-olds in the highest pollution areas had lung capacities that were less than 80 percent of what they should have been. Among those subjected to the least-polluted air, 1.6 percent had underperforming lungs.


The investigators added that the lung effects were similar to those that occur when children live in the home of a mother who smokes.


"This is some of the most convincing evidence that air pollution has chronic effects," Dr. Gauderman said. "We see the effects in all kids. And it's an unavoidable exposure. It's not like smoking, where you can advise people to stop."


In an accompanying editorial, Dr. C. Arden Pope III noted that the air quality in Southern California and elsewhere had improved considerably since the 1990's, when the study was done. There will be debate, Dr. Pope said, over the costs and benefits of making additional improvements, but "continued efforts to improve our air quality are likely to provide additional health benefits."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/national/09lung.html

Published September 8, 2004; Page A1


Washingtonians are spending ever more time stuck in traffic -- nearly three full days a year for the average commuter -- according to a national study released yesterday that also showed the region cemented in its ignominious role as home to the nation's third-worst traffic congestion.


The study, done annually by the Texas Transportation Institute, also found that congestion is worsening across the nation because of a lack of transportation funding, land-use planning and highway management.


"Congestion is increasing in cities of all sizes," said Tim Lomax, an author of the study. Only commuters in the Los Angeles and San Francisco-Oakland regions suffer through worse traffic.


The numbers for Washingtonians are mind-numbing: The average commuter in 2002 spent 67 hours in congestion; the region gave up a collective 126.6 million hours to traffic; trips took half again as long during rush hour as during non-peak times, and an estimated $2.3 billion was lost in congestion-related costs. That's about as much as the cost of a new Woodrow Wilson Bridge.


What's more, things keep getting worse. In 1982, the average Washington area commuter spent 21 hours stuck in traffic. That more than doubled to 48 hours by 1992 and jumped to 67 in 2002. The national average is 46.


None of this came as any surprise to area drivers, particularly yesterday, when roadways were jammed with cars shuttling children to and from school and commuters who had just returned from vacation.


"Every day it starts to add up, and it gets to the point where you're really wasting a lot of time," said Erin Gottert, who commutes from Woodbridge to the District. "I think about it, but I won't let myself count it. If I did, I would be far too depressed."


The study results are based on 2002 data compiled by state and federal traffic agencies for 85 cities. Lomax said that the institute compared traffic counts and miles of traffic lanes to estimate congestion levels. The methods used in the study and the way the data are reported have been adjusted since last year, Lomax said.


Yesterday, the region's transportation interest groups welcomed the report. Highway advocates, transit backers, slow-growth groups, environmentalists and others all claimed that all or parts of the study justified their positions.


The Surface Transportation Policy Project said the report highlights the need for more public transit; the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance said it shows that the region needs to invest in more roads and bridges; and the Bush administration said federally funded high-tech traffic information services are helping ease congestion.


"As we sit here on the day after Labor Day and focus on traffic, the focus should be on the speculative pace of development" in Loudoun, Prince William and Prince George's counties, said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. "Without changing land use, we can't solve this [traffic] problem."


Development promises to worsen traffic, as many area jurisdictions continue to approve thousands of homes in areas where roads already are strained. In Loudoun, for example, developers want to build thousands of homes in an area where traffic clogs virtually every road.


But the study essentially endorsed a range of policy positions -- that more roads are needed, that current facilities need to be managed more efficiently, that drivers should be encouraged to use roads during off-peak times and that land-use plans should set limits on suburban growth.


Different groups also latched onto different charts to draw different rankings. For instance, Washington was third in commuter hours lost in traffic, fourth in travel time and seventh in total hours lost to congestion.


The study found that while transportation officials in the Washington region employ proven measures to relieve congestion -- controlling the pace at which cars enter highways, clearing roads after accidents, timing traffic lights and managing access to secondary roads -- they could do a far better job with the tools they have. The region ranked 12th in using those tactics to fight congestion.


"We still have some water to squeeze out of that towel by instituting better traffic coordination," said Bob Grow of the Greater Washington Board of Trade. But, he said, "in the long run, we need to focus on infrastructure."


The report also found that the Washington area benefits immensely from public transit, reducing by 35 the peak-time hours the average commuter loses in traffic annually, and cutting what could be commuting costs by an estimated $1.2 billion a year.


Based on the report, some groups also renewed calls on Congress to reauthorize its six-year transportation bill. The bill, which provides the billions that states count on to help pay for major projects, has been stalled since last year.


C. Kenneth Orski, editor of the transportation newsletter Innovation Briefs, said the report largely omitted an important piece of infrastructure that area leaders are working to build: toll lanes in which fees are adjusted according to traffic volume. That concept "deserves its own classification because it is a very inventive and effective solution, and it deserves its own place in the catalogue of congestion relief solutions," Orski said.


Virginia officials approved a plan last month to add such toll lanes on the Capital Beltway, while leaders in Maryland are planning similar concepts on the Beltway and other major roads.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2537-2004Sep7.html

Published in USA Today, 9-8-04, p. A2


The nation's traffic problems are getting worse faster than they can be fixed — even in small cities such as Brownsville, Texas, and Pensacola, Fla.


And in the 85 biggest U.S. cities, snarled traffic cost travelers 3.5 billion hours in 2002, up from 700 million in 1982, according to the annual Urban Mobility Report from the Texas Transportation Institute. It was released Tuesday.


A solution to ever-growing traffic jams isn't likely to come soon, transit and highway advocates say.


The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimates it would take as much as $400 billion in federal spending over the next six years to solve traffic problems, according to a 2002 study.


“We just aren't keeping pace,” said John Horsley, executive director of the transportation association. “Our capacity improvements — new highways or transit — are growing at 10% the rate needed.”


Congress, though, is likely to approve billions less than what highway and transit advocates say is required. The House of Representa-tives has agreed to $299 billion over the next six years. The Senate approved $318 billion. Senate sponsors say President Bush probably will approve a more recent proposal of $301 billion.


While lawmakers wrangle, federal spending remains at the rate it has been for the past six years — $218 billion.


“We need action now,” said William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association. “Congestion is only getting worse.”


Using data from 1982 to 2002, the Texas Transportation Institute, part of Texas A&M University, measured just how much worse it is getting.


Over that 20-year period, the study recorded the greatest leap in congestion in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area, from 13 hours stuck in traffic in 1982 for the average peak-period traveler to 61 hours in 2002. In Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., the number rose from nine hours per traveler in 1982 to 57 hours on average in 2002.


The average urban commuter was stuck in traffic 46 hours in 2002, a large increase over the 16 hours spent in snarled traffic in 1982.


In 54 cities, traffic jams increased 30% faster than roads could be built to alleviate them.


Federal Highway Administration chief Mary Peters said part of the problem is that the main source of road money — the federal gas tax — was designed to create the interstate highway system in the 1950s. Under that system, every state gets part of the federal dollars collected.


“We're not necessarily applying money where we need to relieve congestion,” Peters said. “We can't say to the Montanas and the Wyomings of the world, ‘You're not important.' ” Peters said new ways of paying for roads and transit systems need to be found. The Bush administration is promoting user fees, such as those that would charge motorists to drive in less-congested lanes during rush hours. Another proposal in the short term is to manage traffic flow better, Peters said.


The report is based on data from the states and the Transportation Department.


http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20040908/a_traffic08.art.htm