Government spends an estimated $350 billion to $500 billion a year supporting highways.
People and business spend another staggering $1 Trillion dollars a year on driving.
It's no wonder there's a money squeeze on funding trains and light rail.

But with train ridership bursting, and cities begging for more light rail, we will shortly understand that America cannot financially support two infrastructures at the same time. We will have to choose. Actually, we have already chosen: trains.   

We could easily pay for $100 billion a year in trains, by starting to defund highways.  The first step: stop third lanes on highways, stop building expensive overpasses, and stop any more four lane construction.

Photo: Kids at the Gogebic County Fair, U.P. Michigan.

The New York Times finally has done a story reporting that Americans might not WANT to buy cars.

Nine Shift scooped the NYTimes on this by a couple of years, but we welcome their story. Unfortunately, the story provides little new data or statistics, and is mainly a collection of interviews and opinions.  Meanwhile, we continue to add new data to our report, The Evidence Gen Y is Switching to Trains.  You can get it by emailing me at draves at lern.org

As the 21st century demands new realities, people fighting for the last century rely more and more on beliefs and feelings, unsubstantiated by any evidence.

Here was an interesting episode from a courtroom last month. The judge asked the lawyer opposing gay marriage, What would be the harm of permitting gay men and lesbians to marry?  The attorney, having studied the matter deeply, replied, "Your honor, my answer is: I don't know. I don't know." 

As we approach the turning point year of 2010 some will fess up they don't know, but others will continue to believe in things that do not exist.  Believing in last century reality will lead to a belief in conspiracies, and ultimately to something kind of bizarre.  This happened 100 years ago when two girls maintained they had seen fairies, and all of England, including Sr. Conan Doyle, believed them.  We are going to predict that sometime in the next ten years Fox News actually reports on sightings of angels.  What do you think?

There's a whole wave of Gen Yers into the old arts and crafts.

One hundred years ago, the great artists like Picasso and Orozco, writers like Hemingway, and movie directors like Charlie Chaplin, called attention to the shortcomings of the Industrial Age.

So I asked Willie whether newspapers as "paper" would survive. He said yes, noting that there's a difference reading a screen and paper.  Then he told me about the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland, where kids can learn typography, the art of setting linotype, the old metal letters placed upside down and backwards in trays before printing.  One of Willie's friends, a girl, spent 3 months learning how to set type. 

Photo: Kentaro, a New York photographer, in our backyard this summer with his old fashioned camera. He processes the black and white photos in a dark lab.

It was 7:45 a.m., and the kids were streaming onto campus for their first classes. I stared. They were all boys. Hundreds of boys.  A few girls scattered in between.  But basically hundreds and hundreds and boys.

The campus is the only one in the entire state of Wisconsin where males are half of the students. Every other campus in the state, and most every other campus in the whole country, are dominated by female students. 

In a few months we mark 30 years of gender bias keeping smart males out of college.  If you want to know why the economy is slacking, we don't have enough engineers or scientists or food animal vets, this is why. For a moment I felt what it could be.  I was glad for the boys at this campus.

Photo: Welcome desk at the student union.

It is slowly but surely moving to an overhaul similar to healthcare. The signs are the increasing movement towards a focus on outcomes and accountability.

Only 55% of students enrolled in higher education actually graduate.  That means taxpayers and society is wasting almost half of every dollar spent on higher education.

We could then discuss the disgusting edifice complex of "more is better" building on campus, the obsolete notion of sabbaticals where faculty spend 14% of their time, and more.

Photo: Obsolete computer lab at University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where we did a seminar last week. Reminded me of Richard Thieme's rendition of "Pencil Labs" to illustrate how computer labs are already out of date.

SCNF, the French high speed rail company, proposed to the U.S. government that it build 220 mph train service in America (see Chart). 

The news was reported by Foreh Freemark on his terrific blog, The Transport Politic. 

1. First and foremost, this for-profit company thinks there is Big Money in high speed trains. They should know. They run them in Europe.  This takes the discussion to a whole new level.  It's not just a government 'bail out.'  It's not going to poke along at government speed, because there are for-profiteers who want to make money Now. 

2. Any plans for 220 mph trains is good news.  It is the Interstate of rail, while 110 mph is the 2 lane highway of rail.

3. Where does SNCF think all the train riders will come from?  From people switching from cars to trains!

Check out Freemark's inside story here.

We're dancing on the desk here at NIneShift over this terrific news!

Try to find out the extent to which Gen Y is buying cars as compared to previous generations.
You cannot.  We've been trying for six months.

This week I visited with my local librarian, who has been trying to help me find data on car buying by Gen Y.  She told me, "The auto manufacturers don't want to share that information."  That makes sense. Car companies are panicking.  They know Gen Y is not buying cars.  They don't want to make that public.

But why would the U.S. government try to hide the facts? 
* For 30 years, the Commerce Department has collected data on Vehicles per Household (VHH) by age and marital status.  When I asked for the latest data, an official in the Commerce Department replied that they have stopped collecting that data.  Why? 

* This month I asked Eric Bolton of the transportation department for age data on people participating the Cars for Clunkers program.  A local dealer told me that age/date of birth was part of the information forwarded to the government.  A spokesperson got back to me that they are not collecting that data.

No one is saying how many cars Gen Y is buying.  They know.  Is it a conspiracy?  Or just really bad judgment?  What do you think?  Tell us : : :

It is the season of electric cars.  You will hear a lot in the next two years about new electric cars coming out. We have cited a number of reasons why electric cars will not save the automobile.

Here's another reason.  NineShifter Paul Franklin of Portland, OR, is in touch with folks in the alternative fuel industry.  One of the big secrets, sorta secret anyway, is the fact that lithium supplies are at "peak" unless more discoveries are made.

So we have enough lithium for electric cars for ten years, then nothing.  AND the biggest location of those lithium supplies is Bolivia.  Here's a great story from the BBC on it. 

NineShift asks, so with the U.S. having or seeking a military presence in oil rich countries such as Saudia Arabia, and of course invading Iraq for its oil, will we invade Bolivia next? 

Willie, today is your 23rd birthday.  As your father, I want to thank you for the 21st Century.

 Your mother and I are proud of you, will always be proud of you.  But if there's one thing that everybody else should know about you, it is this.  You have given us, and thousands of people who come into contact with the Nine Shift book, the Nine Shift blog, and the Nine Shift speeches - - an understanding and enjoyment of the 21st century that we would not have known without you.

It is your generation, of course. But you alone have said things and done things in a way, often humorous, always worth repeating, that is unique. 

Just last week another person came up after one of my speeches and told me she loves the Willie stories. This has happened over and over again.  Thank you for the 21st century. Photo: Willie as a child, photo and coloring by his mother.