Todd brought up an interesting point in a recent podcast. What gas cost will it take for people to make real changes in their driving habits and fossil fuel usage? Obviously $4 a gallon gas in the U.S. is not it. Todd posited that $14 or $15 a gallon gas would do it.
However, some recent studies are showing that people are paying attention, and they are making changes. Beginning in March, travel by car began to decline, and in my local metropolitan area, mass transit ridership has gone up by about 6%. That is a small figure, in the big scheme of things, but it is a start.
I live in a semi-rural suburban area of the St. Louis metropolitan area. My part of the country is filled with giant pickup trucks and SUV’s. At the QuikTrip every morning when I stop for my daily Diet Coke, I find myself parked amongst pickup trucks whose hoods are taller than the roof of my tiny Toyota wagon. I know they are getting 12 or fewer miles to the gallon. My mileage this morning was about 35 mph when I filled up, and that was mostly urban driving this time.
I look at those big trucks and SUV’s and wonder why they are still driving them. How can they afford them? How many home equity loans are they taking out to put $100 worth of fuel in their tanks, fuel that even a few months ago was $1 less per gallon? I know my husband and I are struggling, even with smaller, more efficient vehicles, to come up with that extra money for gas every week.
We’ve even done something we never thought we’d do. We are carpooling several days a week. We work in the same suburb 11 miles from home, just slightly different hours. On days we drive together, we leave a bit later than I usually do, and stay later at my J.O.B. to accommodate his getting off later. He gets to work earlier than he wants. It is a slight inconvenience, but it is saving us $20 or more a week just to commute together three days. $20 doesn’t sound like much, but when you have a family of five, that $20 pays for a whole lot of milk. Or someone’s prescription. Or gives us back some of our disposable income that we are losing to higher gas prices.
Ideally, we all want to see alternatives to fossil fuels created. There is no doubt that at some point, we will be out of oil. If we aren’t making plans now to use something else, we’re all going to be walking to work. But in the meantime, we have to learn to conserve, to use less.
What price per gallon will it take for you to make changes to your driving habits?
I do not think that those guys will give up their S.U.V and trucks
It is like tobacco and alcohol
Everybody know that it is bad, it is bad for health and worthless spending of money, but many people do it
Here in the Washington DC metropolitan area we are seeing record numbers using buses and the metro subway. I also see more hybrids on the road, though that may be because they get breaks on using HOV, a big deal in DC.
One big reason so many are not getting rid of SUVs and trucks is you just can’t. No one wants them and trade in value is plummeting. It also can make less sense to get rid of a gas guzzler when you look at the prices of hybrids and electric cars. The upfront costs may not justify the exchange. Finally, the main reason I’m not getting rid of my van is its too useful. When you have kids, you have a lot to carry and that extra space is worth the higher costs. The number of times I’ve used that van to move items, carry my family and relatives, and carry luggage on trips is too numerous to mention.
It’s always amazed me (and probably the rest of the world) how cheap gas is in the USA (though we call in petrol here is Oz so as to differentiate it from Liquid Petroleum Gas that a number of cars run on).
In Australia, today 4th June, unleaded is at about
AUS$1:52 a litre
1 US Gallon = 3.78 litres or
That’s AUS$5.76 a gallon
AUS$5.76= US$5.50
…and Australia has cheap prices compared to Europe.
In the UK they are paying the equivalent of nearly US$9 a gallon!
So people of the USA- enjoy it while it lasts, because it’s surely unsustainable…
tom