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?