Reposted from the Flickr: Gas Pump Sticker Shock message board. I think I was fairly reasonable and civil, considering that we were supposed to be discussing a series of photos of people flicking off gas pumps in a weak-kneed attempt to blow off steam.

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I believe that gas prices are too LOW. If it takes $4/gallon gas (or $100/barrel oil) to get Americans to consider alternatives to oil addiction, then bring it on.

Apparently, even “BusinessWeek columnists”:tinyurl.com/dbqkk agree.

Many people living in urban areas already have great transit alternatives. 40% of the trips that Americans make are less than two miles long–a great distance for walking or cycling. New technology makes sharing trips or replacing trips much easier, whether telecommuting, finding someone to carpool with, or shopping online (thus sharing delivery trucks, instead of everyone driving their own deliveries).

If you’re really mad about gas prices, you could do something really radical: never buy gas, ever again. Oh wait, I did that already.

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I am very much for real, and I really have never bought gas, ever. Maybe other people shouldn’t be lazy, or at least maybe they shouldn’t complain loudly when they have to pay the price for their laziness.

I don’t get ten bags of groceries at a time. Buying smaller quantities more often means fresher food. Even when buying for parties, I can carry it easily with a bicycle trailer or a small cart, or have it delivered. (I don’t know what you buy from Best Buy, but most of my electronic stuff is small.) And most of the time, people aren’t traveling very far with loads of stuff. They’re just lazy, as you say, and so they drive.

I, and other non-drivers like me (about one in four Americans), DO make a difference. Imagine if the 300,000 families in Chicago without cars suddenly bought cars tomorrow: imagine how much higher gas prices would be, how much worse traffic or parking or pollution would be. You should be thanking, not belittling.

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Artesia, you’re right that the higher costs eventually get passed down; for instance, taxi and air fares have increased. However, someone who drives has to pay both higher air fare and higher gas prices; I only have to pay the former. Gas taxes here in Chicago rank among the highest local taxes in the country, at around 30c/gallon, but residents of, say, the Netherlands pay gas taxes of over $4/gallon. Since they’ve paid those taxes for a long time, though, the entire economy uses gas more efficiently. Food is grown and processed closer to cities, things are sent by boat or rail instead of truck, etc. So, the market prices for food and other necessities end up being no higher than here. Transit operators do end up paying more for fuel, but fuel is only 3% of my local transit system’s budget.

It’s not an optimal situation for anyone, really, since even I’d prefer that higher prices be offset by better transportation alternatives or for rebates to lower-income consumers. However, let’s hope that today’s high prices will provide a strong impetus to begin using gas more economically, so that we’re not caught in a similarly bad situation during future oil-supply crunches–which, by all indications, will happen more frequently.

Serge, your fatalistic attitude towards pollution is neither encouraging nor correct. We’ve successfully cut pollution: for instance, the Clean Air Act cut carbon monoxide pollution by 90% and sulfur dioxide by 60%, while CFCs have almost disappeared in 10 years since the Montreal Protocol. Many large (and quite wealthy) cities like Vancouver, Copenhagen, Singapore, Zurich, Melbourne, and London have used proactive policies to reduce car traffic and increase transit ridership, walking, and cycling, sometimes dramatically: walking has increased 60% in Melbourne and 50% in Vancouver. Here in the USA, our economy became 33% more energy efficient between 1970-97, and higher prices will accelerate that trend.

Note that I said “many people living in urban areas” — 75% of Americans live in urban areas. I agree that it’s tougher on people living in rural areas. Countries with higher gas prices usually have fewer people living on farmsteads and more living in villages, where there are some alternatives to driving. Farm equipment also gets exempted from gas taxes in most places, which makes a big difference in other countries where taxes are 50-70% of the cost of gas.

The key is to use transportation appropriately: instead of driving half a mile, as many people in cities and suburbs do, maybe we city folks should consider alternatives. That way, we can make sure there’s more scarce gas available for those who truly need it.

Edit: One economist calculates that a program combining a $2/gallon tax and a “gas guzzler buyback” (to ease the transition to higher prices) would save two million barrels of oil each day in the first year. By contrast, Hurricane Katrina knocked out production of 0.86 million barrels of oils a day. Smarter energy policies today will help us when future crises hit.

Looking to save energy? Better look to where the typical household consumes the most of it: the garage.

Ted Fishman, in an otherwise uneventful rah-rah piece on hypercars in the Times Magazine, points out:

The power required to run a midsize car on the road today is about 30 times what is needed to run an average house with every light and appliance on… Amory Lovins, the chief executive of Rocky Mountain Institute… “If all the cars and light trucks on the road had fuel cells on them, they could make 6 to 12 times the amount of generating capacity that all the power companies now own.”

Ford’s plans to ramp up hybrid production using Toyota’s technology points to the broader problem of America losing technological prowess in clean energy.

Ford’s challenge mirrors that in a number of other industries in which Japanese manufacturers have opened up a big lead on their U.S. rivals in the use of alternative energies.
Japan’s solar-panel makers, for instance, currently control half the global market — once dominated by U.S. and European companies. Sharp Corp., a top flat-panel TV maker, has built a $1 billion-a-year business in solar technology with double-digit growth.

Sharp’s biggest U.S. markets include New Jersey and California, which have incentive programs for alternative-fuel sources. Federal Express Corp. last month turned the switch on an Oakland, Calif., processing hub that has 5,700 solar panels covering a facility of 81,000 square feet, supplying 25% to 30% of the facility’s electricity.

Separately, Toshiba Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and Fujitsu Ltd. plan to launch laptops, cellphones and MP3 players in the next few years that run on fuel cells, which make electricity from hydrogen combined with oxygen from the air, with water as exhaust. U.S. technology firms such as Motorola Corp. have been researching the technology too, but are further behind the commercialization curve.

For now, the market for fuel-efficient technologies, while growing, remains small. _But the initial Japanese success in developing such products, combined with the difficulty of bringing them to market, is beginning to stir concern among U.S. competitors as some analysts warn that fossil fuels such as oil will be costly for the foreseeable future._

“The Japanese are particularly good at focusing on promising technologies and commercializing them,” said David C. Victor, director of Stanford University’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development. While there are many innovative U.S. companies, he said, the Japanese have a proven knack for “managing innovation,” and “integrating innovation into the manufacturing process.”

Analysts said Japan’s current edge in the alternative-fuel arena in part comes from making a virtue of necessity. The country has few domestic sources of oil and natural gas, prompting Japanese manufacturers to explore alternative technologies years before the recent surge in oil prices. Toyota, for instance, introduced its first hybrid in 1997.

More important, perhaps, are generous subsidies and other support from the government, which has long worried about the country’s dependence on imported oil. Buyers of solar panels, for example, have received more than $1 billion in subsidies from the Japanese government during the past decade.

By no means does Japan’s lead extend to all alternative technologies. General Electric Co., for example, has won plaudits from environmentalists for its turbines that create power from wind, a promising innovation that hasn’t caught on widely in Japan. The Japanese are lagging behind, too, in areas such as biomass, a potentially significant energy source in which organic waste is burned to create steam that turns a turbine.

What’s more, not all alternative technologies may pan out. “It’s clear the hybrid vehicle could well be a platform for innovation in automobiles,” said Mr. Victor of Stanford. But with fuel cells or solar panels, he says, “it isn’t yet clear these are winners.”

Japan Inc.’s strategy of “picking winners” may not ultimately produce the best results, but I’m sure it’ll work better than America Inc.’s strategy of keeping its head in the sand and prioritizing the illusion of cheap, abundant oil above all else.

Surprisingly, the latest runup in gas prices has resulted in some eminently sensible voices cutting through the usual screeds. Perhaps it’s because the proximate cause of the gas crisis — the drowning of Louisiana and Mississippi — was exacerbated by oil consumption, both in sinking southern Louisiana’s wetlands and in pumping carbon into a warming atmosphere that fuels stronger hurricanes. Or maybe it’s because years of steady increases and a do-nothing administration have worked to convince at least a segment of the public that the same-old won’t work any more.

* Ben Adler, a new face at TNR, sensibly suggests “gas taxes to spur New Urbanist investment”:http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2759: “We mass transit users would be rewarded by a tax rebate, but we’d also be rewarded by investments in mass transit that keep our fares down and our service reliable. That would encourage more drivers to join us as well… The government could also use gas tax revenues to provide tax incentives to localities that impose sensible zoning restrictions — limiting sprawl, requiring density, encouraging walking (by building sidewalks) and, as I’ve previously mentioned, limiting garage size. But maybe now I’m just getting into the realm of fantasy.” Well, not really: cities across the country are already taking these steps. (A Friendster search on Adler shows that he’s a Brooklynite displaced to DC, and New Yorkers famously [and somewhat understandably, given the vastness of their backyard] know little about urbanist initiatives across the land.)

* The Center for American Progress proposes “feebates”:http://www.northwestwatch.org/reforms/feebates.asp along with a scrap-and-replace program as parts of a “Progressive Response to High Oil and Gas Prices”:http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=669657. In the section on car-sharing, they point out that “the average U.S. private car sits idle 96 percent of the time.” (Of course, they don’t mention the built environment surrounding said shared cars — although shared cars, like any common infrastructure, work best in dense, walkable neighborhoods.)

* For once, the Trib’s right-wing editorial bias comes in handy. “Steve Chapman”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/chi-0509080033sep08,1,3368822.column?coll=chi-business-hed comes down firmly on the side of “something for high prices rather than nothing at any price,” he notes that price controls would be “[t]elling consumers they should waste fuel to their hearts’ content, and telling producers to leave the black stuff in the ground. When events in the world conspire to make oil dear, there is nothing to be gained from masking that fact. We can ignore reality, but reality won’t ignore us.”

* Somewhat related: “Gregg Easterbrook”:http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050919&s=easterbrook091905 refers to the “Hummer personality defect.”

* I think I did admirably in this “Flickr message-board discussion”:http://flickr.com/groups/gaspump/discuss/82822/#comment678124 of gas prices, considering the built-in hostility of posting amidst photos of people flicking off gas pumps (way to release your anger — like that’ll do something).

Many people living in urban areas already have great transit alternatives. 40% of the trips that Americans make are less than two miles long–a great distance for walking or cycling. New technology makes sharing trips or replacing trips much easier, whether telecommuting, finding someone to carpool with, or shopping online (thus sharing delivery trucks, instead of everyone driving their own deliveries).

If you’re really mad about gas prices, you could do something really radical: never buy gas, ever again. Oh wait, I did that already…

Maybe other people shouldn’t be lazy, or at least maybe they shouldn’t complain loudly when they have to pay the price for their laziness.

I don’t get ten bags of groceries at a time. Buying smaller quantities more often means fresher food. Even when buying for parties, I can carry it easily with a bicycle trailer or a small cart, or have it delivered. (I don’t know what you buy from Best Buy, but most of my electronic stuff is small.) And most of the time, people _aren’t_ traveling very far with loads of stuff. They’re just lazy, as you say, and so they drive…

Higher [gas] costs eventually get passed down; for instance, taxi and air fares have increased. However, someone who drives has to pay both higher air fare _and_ higher gas prices; I only have to pay the former. Gas taxes here in Chicago rank among the highest local taxes in the country, at around 30c/gallon, but residents of, say, the Netherlands pay gas _taxes_ of over $4/gallon. Since they’ve paid those taxes for a long time, though, the entire economy uses gas more efficiently. Food is grown and processed closer to cities, things are sent by boat or rail instead of truck, etc. So, the market prices for food and other necessities end up being no higher than here. Transit operators do end up paying more for fuel, but fuel is only 3% of my local transit system’s budget.

It’s not an optimal situation for anyone, really, since even I’d prefer that higher prices be offset by better transportation alternatives or for rebates to lower-income consumers. However, let’s hope that today’s high prices will provide a strong impetus to begin using gas more economically, so that we’re not caught in a similarly bad situation during future oil-supply crunches — which, by all indications, will happen more frequently…

We’ve successfully cut pollution: for instance, the Clean Air Act cut carbon monoxide pollution by 90% and sulfur dioxide by 60%, while CFCs have almost disappeared in 10 years since the Montreal Protocol. Many large (and quite wealthy) cities like Vancouver, Copenhagen, Singapore, Zurich, Melbourne, and London have used proactive policies to reduce car traffic and increase transit ridership, walking, and cycling, sometimes dramatically: walking has increased 60% in Melbourne and 50% in Vancouver. Here in the USA, our economy became 33% more energy efficient between 1970-97, and higher prices will accelerate that trend….

The key is to use transportation appropriately: instead of driving half a mile, as many people in cities and suburbs do, maybe we city folks should consider alternatives. That way, we can make sure there’s more scarce gas available for those who truly need it.

Edit: “One economist”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5080-2004May31.html calculates that a program combining a $2/gallon tax and a “gas guzzler buyback” (to ease the transition to higher prices) would save two million barrels of oil each day in the first year. By contrast, Hurricane Katrina knocked out production of 0.86 million barrels of oils a day. Smarter energy policies today will help us when future crises hit.

A recent study done for Transportation Alternatives found a single census tract in Manhattan where nearly half of employees drive to work. (The average for all office jobs in Manhattan is around 12%.) Executives on Park Avenue? Financiers on Wall Street? Nope: try bureaucrats at City Hall. As always, “build parking and they will drive”; the city gives away $33 million a year in free parking to thousands of workers at NYPD, NYCDOT, and other agencies.

$4/gallon, here we come!

Originally uploaded by paytonc.

All sorts of wonderful things can happen with $4/gallon gas, since that’s about where a number of alternatives become economically feasible.

The trouble is, of course, that the $4 is going to oil corporations (and their often-despotic vendors) and not to rebuild our own decrepit infrastructure.

“The postwar modern American city was built on a foundation of cheap gas that allows even low-paid workers to drive to and from their jobs. Take away the cheap gas and the foundation begins to crack.” Jeffrey Ball writing in the Wall Street Journal, 12 July 2004

Thank goodness for the Internet Wayback Machine, which has the results from the Lincoln Park Trixie Society’s 2000 board member elections, complete with candidate photos. Sadly, though, the detailed platform of Kate Sheridan (“Will launch the “Center for Necessary Transportation” (CNT) and the “Starbucks Efficient Mortgage” (SEM) for Trixies living in the village”) has been lost to history.

Over in DTWOF-land, Stuart goes car-free on a whim, discarding the “air-conditioned sarcophag[us]” for the sidewalk. Yippee! Huzzahs for convictions! But the bastards in their Bummers still pose a mortal threat…

The 2005 edition of Driven to Spend, just released by STPP and CNT, finds that households spent 52% of their 2003 income on housing and transportation, a figure that’s undoubtedly higher today thanks to a run-up in both. Indeed, both have been rising substantially; despite higher incomes overall, housing and transport expenditures have both doubled as a share of household expenses over the past 40 years — e.g., they’ve grown twice as fast as incomes! American auto dependence has gotten to the point where 11% of the world’s crude oil goes into American gas tanks.

More importantly, cities with extensive public transit already save their residents billions of dollars in personal expenditures each year — a figure that will grow as higher gas prices further raise the cost of driving. “[R]egions with transit are losing less per household from the increase in gas prices… [I]nvestments by… government in more efficient transportation systems, effectively lower[s]… transportation expenditures and convert[s] transportation dollars that would otherwise leave the region in the form of higher payments for gasoline to dollars that help pay for local transportation services plus other household expenses.”

A one-cent increase in gas prices mean that the Big Oil companies and despots who control most of the world’s oil (nearly 2/3 of American oil is imported) get to suck an additional $1.4 billion out of the pockets of American consumers — money that could otherwise be invested or spent in America, for Americans. The toll is especially high for regions that have no local oil industry and therefore see little economic gain from Big Oil: higher gas prices in 2004 took nearly $800 million from metro Chicago and nearly $500 million from both metro Detroit and metro Washington. Interestingly, the New York metro lost $20 million less to Big Oil than Chicago, even though New York has 17% more households — principally because New Yorkers use transit more and drive less. The state of Florida lost $2.3 billion to Big Oil, again more than more-populous New York state due to the former’s auto dependence.

Just think what our metropolitan economies could do with billions of extra dollars. Or, imagine if someone (ahem) had raised gas TAXES earlier, thereby making sure that those billions go back to us Americans instead of building submarine sandcastles in the Persian Gulf for oil sheiks to play in.

The Bronx borough president recently annouced that car-free Sundays might return to one of America’s most elegant boulevards, Grand Concourse, soon.

Sunday street closures are a great way to have an “everyday festival,” draw people outside to spend some extra dough in the neighborhood, and plant the seed for future traffic calming. (If it can be this nice once a week, why not all week?) Memorial Drive in Cambridge and the park drives inside Golden Gate Park, Central Park, and Prospect Park are examples of weekend street closures. Why not, say, Grant Park?

Now, here’s a nice twist on growth: Virginia Groark from the Trib reports that the tollway authority is suing a developer for causing traffic backups and, more importantly, reneging on a promise to pay for tollway improvements. This case is exceptional because the traffic jams can be pinpointed on one cause, but it’s perhaps a foretaste of a libertarian future, where social costs like traffic congestion get parceled out via the courts. Hooray.

Nadine Brozan’s article in the Times points out that (surprise!) parking lots are a woeful under-use of space in New York:

A Manhattan commercial real estate broker makes the aesthetic case for ripping up parking lots:

In [the view of Anne De Marzo, a broker who specializes in transactions involving developers and the parking industry], the disappearance of lots is aesthetically beneficial. “We won’t have unsightly garages and lots on desolate streets anymore,” she said. “Instead, there will be beautiful buildings with garages.” She did concede that such beauty has its price: higher fees for drivers.

An executive at a billion-dollar real estate investment trust goes further, saying that (gasp) supply and demand also apply to parking:

Fred Harris, senior vice president of AvalonBay Communities, whose Avalon Chrystie Place will have 713 apartments and fewer than 200 underground parking spots, agreed. “There is some academic research showing that parking capacity encourages traffic,” he said. “And a lack of capacity, while it may be an annoyance, lowers traffic. Parking may be great, but in the city people can live without it.”

The article also says does say that the High Line “is to be revived as an elevated promenade” (emphasis mine). I wonder if Bucktown millionaires would be more amenable to a Bloomingdale Promenade than a simple Trail.