Nine Shift

Boomers to drive less starting next year

The squeeze is on for our nation's highways. Not only are young people driving 37% fewer miles, but starting next year the car-loving generation starts to drive fewer miles.

Currently the difference in driving habits between Gen Y (age 30 and under) and Boomers (age 45-63) is astounding.

Here's more data from the National Highway Transportation Survey just released last month.

   The difference in driving habits between young adults and those over age 40 is dramatic. Last year those 40 and over were just 46.4% of the population but they drove a whopping 59.3% of the miles.

 

   For example, a typical 58 year old last year drove 11,607 miles, while the average 28 year old drove just 7,011 miles last year.  

   But all the government surveys indicate that after age 65, people start to drive less. In ten years most of the Baby Boomer generation will be over age 65. The squeeze will be on for highways, as driving drops even more. 

 

Proof young people are driving less (Part II)

Let's just discount other causes here:

Recession.  The excuse du jour is the economy. But the decline in driving began well before the recession. It began as early as ten years ago. A slight drop was reported in the 2001 government study. Train ridership began record high numbers beginning in 2005. And a report from the Governor’s Highway Safety Commission indicates that an overall decline in driving and highway fatalities began in 2005, well before the start of the recession. 

   Further evidence: During the recession last year train ridership declined only 3% while both car and plane ridership each dropped more than 10%.

Gas prices. Yesterday's excuse. The price of gas did not affect the numbers. The drop began before the rise in gas prices, and driving continued to go down when gas prices went down. Train ridership actually grew as the price of gas dropped in late 2008. 

 

Population changes. Population changes do not account for the decline.  Between 1995 and 2009 the number of people aged 21-30 actually grew slightly from 13.3% of the population to 13.9%.

Comparing apples to oranges. No, we're comparing apples to apples. The numbers are a percentage of total driving, so it accurately compares the driving of young people to those of other ages in all three time frames.

Temporary setback. Well, that's the hope of people over age 40, the car generation. But there is no evidence for that. This has been going on for over ten years. With trains just starting to be built, and telecommuting increasing every year, and car sharing growing, there is no evidence that young people will magically all start driving more.  Gen Y has started the shift from cars to trains, which is good news for everybody.

The STEM Farce

The U.S. government will now spend hundreds of millions on the STEM farce.

It is a useless wasteful expenditure of money. The solution? Send smart students to college.

Here's what we do now. We send the 'C' students to college. We send the 'A' students to: McDonald's (or WalMart).

Last month a K-12 teacher in St. Croix Falls, Wisc., explained to me how it works.  He, and other teachers, give 70% of the grade based on getting the correct answers, and 30% based on turning work in on time.

Thus, a student getting all the answers right and turning the work in a day late gets a 'C.'  And the student getting only 80% of the answers right (a 'C') but turns it in on time gets an 'A.'   So the C students go to college, and the A students go to McDonald's.

Photo: Two teachers at my seminar on gender at St. Croix Falls, Wisc. Notice the big mural in the background. It portrays the Nine Shift that happened 100 years ago.

Cars: The Start of Safety Concerns

The Toyota scandal marks the beginning of a new era for the automobile: safety concerns.

Cars of course are deathmobiles, causing 40,000 deaths a year in the U.S., worldwide the third most preventable cause of death, according to the World Health Organization.

But now we have two opposing twists going on. First, the IBM of the auto world, Toyota, has safety concerns. Meaning no car is safe.  Second, the auto companies are trying to make cars even more dangerous by installing Internet and movie connections in autos.  The dual effect is going to be a massive concern over safety.

As we have predicted, this will culminate between 2015 and 2017 in the tipping point in the decline of the auto. Someone so famous and so important (not a movie star, someone important) dies in an auto crash that Americans will say "enough is enough" with the auto.

About ten years ago the President of our university in town was killed in an auto crash. I will also remember sitting down at the dinner table that night and one of our kids, totally unaware of the accident, was wearing a Deathmobile T-shirt.  The kids know. 

The beginning, and end, of an era for trains

Trains are in this hazy transition period. It's both the beginning of an era. And an end of era, for trains.

I rode the new Northstar commuter train over the weekend from Minneapolis out to the end of the line and back.

It's the end of an era.  There were families and older people on the train on Saturday. No one was commuting. Everyone was taking the kids or wife for an old fashioned fun train ride. But it's the end of the tourist leisure train rider. It's like the Sunday drive of decades ago, when men took the family for a leisurely Sunday drive.  Soon everyone will be riding trains so often, no one will consider it a treat like the kids in the picture did.

In a transition statement that describes both the end and the beginning, one young kid in the picture said, "This is sweet. Let's ride it more often."  

It's the beginning of an era.  Being naive, I was shocked that the train did not stop in the middle of towns, but on the outskirts, surrounded by subdivisions, even no divisions, just fields. Every top had parking lots for about 100 cars.  But that's not the future. The future is not commuting. The future is building apartment buildings and townhouses for 10,000 people within 12 blocks of the train station. So far, it did not look like any city had even thought about rezoning the area around the train station.

Why "Responsibility" is obsolete

Teachers should NOT be teaching "responsibility" in this century.

When teachers talk about "responsibility," they primarily mean four very specific behaviors. They don't mean taking care of your family, or not robbing a bank. Here's the four behaviors teachers mean when they say (and grade) "responsibility:"

1.Showing up.  Showing up is the last thing employers want or need in the 21st century. That's because people who work from home are 25% more productive than people who show up at the office or factory.

2.Show up on time. Nobody should show up 'on time,' by which teachers mean 8-4 or 9-5. People should work during their peak productivity hours.  Why would any employer want someone to work regularly when she or he is the least productive?

3.Turn work in on time. Yes, we want people to turn work in on time. But 'on time' in this century gets measured weekly and on a project basis, not daily. Almost no knowledge worker gets evaluated daily. The other point: there's no problem in the workplace turning work in on time. 

4.'Do the work.'  No, no, no.  No employer wants his or her workers to do more work than necessary. Instead, in this century, doing a project in less time is more valuable than doing it in more time. When teachers say 'he didn't do the work,' they mean the student did not put in enough time, not that the student didn't know the subject matter.  In the workplace of the 21st century, the 'less work' one does to achieve a specified outcome, the more profitable and productive that worker is. 

Teacher should be preparing students for the workplace. But that should be the workplace of the 21st century, NOT the factory of the last century.  Photo: Scene from my seminar for K-12 teachers at the St. Croix Falls (Wisconsin) public school district. The big mural portrays the changes of 100 years ago, when society went from an Agrarian Age to the Industrial Age and schools had to change.

SuperBowl Ads: Males are back !

A positive image of males is back.  Just take a look at the commercials.

Last night's SuperBowl ads were clear:  gone is the stupid, foolish Homer Simpson male image. Moving forward, we will see a more positive male image.  The trend has been happening for about a year now in television commercials. 

This happened 100 years ago, of course.  In 1900 the typical male image in magazine ads was passive, stupid, dependent on the female, just like the last 10 or so years of Homer Simpson-ish portrayals. But around 1910 that began to change, and by the 1920's men were strong and assertive. And so were women. We've moving back towards a win-win gender image, thank goodness. 

Can Government Govern?

Is the closing of our state parks the first sign that our government is no longer able to govern? 

Kinda dramatic statement, but it's been a tough week for Americans (health care looks dead, rich get to buy elections).

Julie and I took son Willie to in Puerto Rico last month (wonderful experience) and took walks on the beach. One state park at the beach was closed.  My guess? Budget cut backs.  Photo: overflowing garbage can at El Yunque national park in Puerto Rico, the only national park that is a tropical forest (go there).

Back in Wisconsin, I went to my local state park to walk in the woods.  It was closed.  Well, I could walk into the park (and did), but the entrance was closed to vehicles.  The irony: as our government tries to combat global climate change, reduce air pollution, encourage biodiversity, promote solar energy, boost healthy lifestyles among citizens, reduce obesity - - it closes parks, arguably the most convenient and popular way Americans experience the natural world.    Upside: I get a whole state park to myself, saw no one for two hours. 

Just wondering if this initial government shutdown temporary, or whether roads will be closed due to lack of bridge repair, schools will close one or more days a week, garbage gets collected every other week, colleges limit enrollment (oops, that's already happening), etc. Is the park close downs and cutbacks temporary or the start of government no longer able to govern?

How to Save Newspapers: Part III

Another benefit to our model is that advertising will return to newspapers.

Today newspaper advertising cannot be targeted to an individual. It is "mass" advertising, and most of it is wasted on people who don't want to see the ad. The interested individuals may not ever get to see the ads they want to see.

In our model, the advertising can be targeted to an individual.

With an online database for each subscriber, advertisers can determine which subscribers they want to reach.  The interest areas of each subscriber, combined with some basic demographics, will allow advertisers to target their ads just like Facebook Ads or Google Ads.

Subscribers would have the option of paying the regular price for the customized newspaper, or paying less and taking advertisements.  There would be fewer ads, and the ads would be of more interest to the subscriber.

It's a win-win-win for readers, newspapers and advertisers. 

How to Save Newspapers: Part II

The financial model is viable now. But it will be even more profitable in the future. With people living more closely together in dense neighborhoods rather than spread out in suburbs, having a local copier printing newspapers becomes economically feasible, as does the delivery routes. It might even be cheaper to deliver newspapers in a dense neighborhood than in a sprawling suburb.

Most people will not have the money, nor the time, nor the space, to have their own individual printers, although this is a possibility for those with all three.

And people will want to have a customized News Service anyway. So the online tailored news source is something that should develop even without the print option.

You will go online and specify what categories (sports, living, international news, local news, etc.) and what news sources (New York Times for international news; Wall Street Journal for Business; local newspaper for local news, etc.).  You can change the categories and sources anytime you want.

Each media will choose the top stories in each category and lay out the stories in complete pages. The News Service just digitally puts the completed pages together and then prints the customized newspaper. Pretty neat idea, huh?