2008-06-13

I Would Drive 5000 Miles

A quote from a recent Times article (U.S. Gasoline Rises Above $4 A Gallon For First Time) was pretty striking to me:

A survey issued last week found that 74 percent of Americans would change their driving habits if gasoline were to top $4 per gallon.

If gasoline prices hit $5 a gallon, 85 percent of Americans would cut out nonessential driving, consolidate errands, carpool, walk or bike, according to the survey by Ipsos Public Affairs.


<sarcasm>What?! People might actually start acting as if oil were a valuable resource? And realize that easy motoring convenience has a non-negligible price?! You're kidding!! Carpooling and consolidating errands?! Cutting out nonessential driving?!?! What madness is this country being driven to?! This American way of life is non-negotiable!! Dick Cheney told us so!</sarcasm>

In case I haven't shared it before, here is a great Times graph showing gasoline per gallon price, normalized to 2005 dollars. It shows that if you factor in inflation, the 1981 peak was over $3/gallon. But apparently, we’ve blown past that record now.


I consider myself very fortunate (and happy) that I made life choices letting me minimize my driving. I have filled my gas tank only five times in the past six months, and that includes a 700-mile round trip from Boston to Ithaca (3 people in the car each way, in case you were wondering). Most of the remaining driving was for work (reimbursed at 50.5¢/mile). Owning my dorkmobile-bicycle-trailer also makes this lifestyle possible. Minimal car use also works well with tandem parking—my car sits in the back spot, so JMD and I rarely have to do the car shuffle.

Here’s some average mileage data (per vehicle and per household) from the Energy Information Administration:

An average vehicle, therefore, traveled farther in 1994 than in 1988: 11,400 miles per year compared with 10,200 miles per year (Figure 3.2). Because the number of vehicles per household remained steady at about 1.8 from 1988 through 1994, per-vehicle and per-household mileage grew at about same rate. The per-household average rose from 18,600 miles in 1988 to 21,100 miles in 1994.


So compared to ~12,000 miles/year per vehicle, I’ve consistently held it to ~5000/year, since starting grad school and then returning to Boston:


Yeah, you can really see the effect of ditching the Cambridge-to-495 daily commute. Of course, currently, my transportation expenses are displaced to the other modes that I use (CharlieCard, bicycle parts). But if you add up my MBTA costs for Q1+Q2 2008, they were: $180. Difference between driving 5,000 vs. 12,000 miles with my current vehicle: ~$1120/year. Hellsyeah.

In case there is any non-overlap on my friendslist, arcticturtle had a post on this topic that made me laugh out loud (“not to gloat, but…”):

when we bought our hybrid Honda Insight in 2000, lots of people told us it wouldn't be worth it - we wouldn't save enough gas to make up the expense of buying it (though, really, it wasn't much more than a "comparable" nonhybrid, whatever that is.)

We didn't argue. We figured driving clean was worth spending more. We wanted to help foster the improving technology. Plus, surprisingly few terrorist organizations are funded by Japanese automotive engineers.


Of course, I do realize that the rise in fuel prices is going to have an effect on the overall economy—everybody is going to take a price hit, given the national infrastructure (transportation, food, distribution of goods) we’ve built up based on cheap fuel (see the shipping container post).

Finally, I have to direct folks to an On Point episode on WBUR on the topic of oil prices. It grabbed my interest strongly enough that I ended up sitting in my car in the Whole Foods parking lot, to catch the whole episode. One striking piece of information: the United States consumes 33% of world’s road fuel, with only 5% of the population. It was mostly information that I knew and agree with, but it was still worth a listen.

5 Comments:

At 7:38 PM, Blogger Jessie said...

I heard someone yelling the other day (in some news piece) that everyone needed to starting thinking about real, radical change. Here's what he said: "Leave the car at home for a week!" I cracked up. In my car.

I do think it's harder to make those choices when you live, for instance, 10-12 miles from the nearest supermarket, 50 miles from the "cheap" supermarket in town. Then you're making real sacrifices if you cut driving. But the idea that you can live that way and have no costs? That's still insane.

And of course, as someone who has paid obscene commuter rail prices for years ($9.50 round trip to Brandeis, gas prices would have to be around $9/gal before I'd lose money by driving) I admit that I think other people could be screwed for a while.

 
At 7:40 PM, Blogger Jessie said...

I meant to also say, I recently read a very positive review of "Divided Highways" by Tom Lewis. I probably won't get to it any time soon but would of course be interested in your review.

 
At 7:54 AM, Blogger Wes Carroll said...

I find this beyond funny, largely because I've been saying for years that $5 gas would be a wonderful thing for this country (in a long-term sense).

Externalities in the economic system really, really kill you when you try to act rationally as a single actor and as a people. Unfortunately, as I understand it, externalities are impossible to get out of the system; they are the bits that fall outside the parts you (you as the designer of the economic system) have accounted for.

Or am I wrong? Hit me with the knowledge, knowledgable people.

 
At 10:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

We're certainly not poster children for "never use the car": I haven't been on my bike in a couple years, for example, and we do drive to the office in the winter (in part because I don't feel safe on the trails in the dark when they're covered in snow). But even so, the two of us keep to around 16000 km/year, so maybe that's around 1200 l of gas.

Meanwhile, of course, my mother continues on her single-handed quest to keep Exxon/Mobil in business. *shrug*

 
At 12:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Articles like this show just how ignorant of supply and demand people are.

not one article in these surveys points out the obvious: if $22 is the price at which a significant chunk of people will change their driving habits, then in the event of a supply crunch, the price is GUARANTEED to reach $22.

Mundanes. What can you do..

--Omri

 

Post a Comment

<< Home