The Wall Street Journal reports that the nation’s gasoline consumption has dropped by 1.1 percent from the previous year’s levels. No doubt the end-of-the-suburbs crowd will use this to justify their claims.
Are Americans ready for $4 a gallon gas?
Flickr photo by slworking2.
The problem is that, though people may be buying less gasoline, they aren’t driving any less. According to the latest report from the U.S. Department of Transportation, driving through October of 2007 was almost exactly the same as in 2006, which was a little more than in 2005.
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We saw this same pattern back in the 1970s. As US DOT data show, when gas prices went up in 1974, driving actually declined slightly. But people bought more fuel-efficient cars, and by 1975 driving was increasing again. It declined slightly again in 1979 and 1980, but came roaring back in the 1980s, growing by more than 4 percent per year in some years.
It seems pretty clear that, if we weren’t fighting a war in Iraq, gasoline prices today would be well under $3 a gallon. So the high prices are not due to peak oil but to government policies — just like most previous oil “shortages.”
Curiously, another blog that focuses mainly on the retail industry agrees. A couple of years ago, the same retail analysts predicted that, if high fuel prices did lead Americans to change their travel habits, those changes would benefit supercenters and other big-box stores where people could do all their shopping in one stop. So much for New Urbanism.
Antiplanner,
The weakening U.S. dollar has also played a role in gasoline prices, or it has for Americans since petroleum that is traded in world markets is denominated in U.S. dollars.
I agree that many people will switch to more fuel efficient vehicles before cutting back on driving, but it seems to me that it is the timing of the individual decision which matters more. If you bought a new car, say, only 3-4 years ago, then you may cut back on marginal driving. If you bought a gas guzzler 8-10 years ago, you may trade in for a more fuel efficient vehicle. I have thought for a while now that gas prices will have to go north of $4 per gallon before there is a cutback in overall VMT.
As far as urban form goes, high fuel prices may (or may not) naturally curb suburbanization, but the kicker is that even if it does, we don’t really know where businesses or homeowners will locate. Assuming that they do, if you have a major city with several big business districts with 5-10% of urban employment in each area and lots of scattered employment, do people congeal around the big districts, or do they densify all throughout the entire urban area? Interesting question.
Your discussion only provides agregated vmt. In the 1970s a New Zealand Ministry of Transport study looked at the impact of the first fuel shock on VMT by day of week for urban and rural state highways. Growth rates for urban weekday VMT did not change, but weekend growth fell by half. Growth rates for rural weekday VMT fell by half, growth in Saturday travel disappeared completely and Sunday VMT declined by 20%.
The most likely explanation is that New Zealander’s responded to high fuel prices by reducing recreational travel. Commute travel may actually have been increased by the number of households needing more than one income to make ends meet.
Two other statistics support this cnclusion.
Traffic fatalities for drivers fell by almost the same percent as cyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists. But pillion and passenger fatalities fell by three times that percent. The percent reduction for victims aged under 25 was 2.5 times greater than for those aged over 25. A similar pattern was not seen again until the early part of this decade when we again saw a more than a decade of real fuel price decreases evaporate in a matter of months.
Using the gender percentage of drivers involved in crashes reported to the police as a proxy for the percentage of VMT driven men and women we find that in the ten years after the first oil shock men reduced their aggregate VMT by 10% while women increased theirs by 50%. Employment figures suggest that the growth in female VMT was the result of increased two income households. It can be speculated that this led to increased commute VMT and thus increased urban congestion.
Antiplanner: No doubt the end-of-the-suburbs crowd will use this to justify their claims.
JK: Why would anyone expect everyone to suddenly move to the big city just because gas prices jump?
They MAY move closer to their jobs the next time they move, but that job is unlikely to be in the big city. Planners have yet to notice that only a tiny fraction of jobs are still in the central city. (planners tend to live in the 1920s)
Planners also seem to ignore the European experience that 78% of person-kilometers are by private car with $8/gal gas.
PS, when you look deeper into the cost of driving, it turns out that the cost of gas is only 25-35% for most people. Gas costs are swamped by the fixed costs, manly depreciation.
Thanks
JK
I agree high oil prices are a result of government policies but would would add they are being pushed even higher by the decline in the US dollar and speculators playing the futures market. If we ever see prices move downward we may see a bursting of the oil bubble and some relief.
The appearance of a reasonable energy policy in the US would help.
Actually I have been driving less in the past year. But not because of gas prices. I installed a fiber optic 15 Mbps upl/dnld Internet line at my house and can now do a lot more work without leaving my back yard. My miles travelled have probably dropped around 5%.
My miles travelled have probably dropped around 5%.
I’m pretty sure you just violated The Patriot Act.
So if 10 years from now we’re all driving a hybrid prius or a diesel jetta running on ultra low sulphur diesel or some new plug-in hybrid… does that mean we would see miles driven take a spike up?
A.P: “No doubt the end-of-the-suburbs crowd will use this to justify their claims.”
Let’s let this group speak for themselves. I now a few in this crowd and have never heard this analogy. Way to put words in your enemy’s mouth. Of course the planners with all their blind rage against the suburbs would never be able to link less gas buying with economic conditions or fuel efficient cars (they’re just too ignorant).
So if 10 years from now we’re all driving a hybrid prius or a diesel jetta running on ultra low sulphur diesel or some new plug-in hybrid… does that mean we would see miles driven take a spike up?
I presume you weren’t at DU the last two days at RMLUI, where there was much discussion over this. There is no consensus on the answer, but Chris Nelson and those of that stripe say no, whereas Doug Farr and similar today said yes.
DS
BTW, From the Wall Street article that AP references:
“Anne Heedt, of Clovis, Calif., has been moving toward a more fuel-efficient lifestyle for the past few years. She owns a Toyota Prius hybrid but takes her bike on errands when weather permits.â€Â
There it is again, apparently even the Wall Street Journal seems to believe that humans generate energy from nothing, or at least that human energy is cheaper than gas.
So Ms. Heedt for every mile that she bikes burns about 50 human energy calories which she must one way or another replenish in nutrition. By comparison her Prius burns 0.05 gallons of gas to transport her the same mile, that is $0.17 of gas per mile.
Does the Wall Street Journal think that 50 calories of ready to eat human food will end up costing Ms. Heedt less than the $0.17 of gas that her Prius would burn?
I do not know the answer myself especially if one adds the automotive costs of maintenance and depreciation. I am however surprised that WSJ seems to take for granted that the cost of human food energy is zero.
Does also the production, distribution and preparation of 50 human energy food calories burn less than 0.02 gallons of gas?
….of course if she buys those 50 calories that she burned from the new urbanist’s local French Style Café (or even Starbucks) then it will certainly cost her more than $0.17. That I’m pretty sure of.
Ettinger said:
“Does also the production, distribution and preparation of 50 human energy food calories burn less than 0.02 gallons of gas?”
This has come up on some websites before. There is so much oil embodied in food, that on certain assumptions bicycles have a mpg consumption which is no better than a car.
On the other hand, I suspect that people would consume the food, whether they cycle or not. The excess food will pass through their bodies, or end up on their waist-lines.
This will only be determined long term. Though in the mean time what is certain is that the Anti-Planner will continue his anti-market/anti-rail/anti-mobility agenda.
Francis King,
Yes, indeed it has come up before and I’ve already posted my answer to your claim on the 2/20/2008 post, comment #15. But, I’ll say it another way: if indeed Ms. Heedt eats, say, an extra 300 calories a day, then she does not save any money (and supposedly the planet) by biking them off. She would only save money (and according to some the planet) if she did not eat the 300 cals in the first place and then still drove her Prius instead of biking.
Certainly there are other personal benefits to exercising. However, it is most likely that human physical exercise increases a person’s environmental impact compared to driving the same distance. As I have mentioned before, I am a long distance runner, I run about 60 miles a week and by doing so I burn an extra 1500 calories of human food energy per day – a crime by green philosophy standards.
The greens just have not caught up with this fact yet, or perhaps it is not their first priority since a substantial portion of the green philosophy was started by physically active people. But as green totalitarianism indoctrinates more and more of the sedentary mainstream, I wouldn’t be surprised if the day comes when greens catch up with these facts and start campaigning to curtail this activity of mine
I do not mean to pick on Francis King. I insisted though because what surprises me about the comments, or lack thereof, is not the mere fact that one commentator mis-applies the principle of conservation of energy, but the fact that there must be at least a few planners that read this blog and nobody seems to comment on faulty basic science /arithmetic. Sure, any one person, no matter how smart or expert ignores many fundamental facts. But if planners do not see even such simplistic errors, how can there be an expectation that they (or any one else for that matter) can possibly plan such complex and chaotic systems as a human society?
From the article:
As consumers make major spending decisions, such as where to live and what kind of vehicle to drive, they are beginning to factor in the cost of fuel. Some are choosing smaller cars or hybrids, or are moving closer to their jobs to cut down on driving.
The last point, which the writer confirms with a sample of one, is one of the key false premises of the Smart Growth marketing campaign. It’s not only people that leave the centers for the suburbs; so do jobs.
In general, falling gas consumption and increasing auto VMT is a nightmare for the Smart Growthers; leaving aside the planning implications, less money in the HTF mass transit set aside means less money for boutique PT projects.
“But, I’ll say it another way: if indeed Ms. Heedt eats, say, an extra 300 calories a day, then she does not save any money (and supposedly the planet) by biking them off. She would only save money (and according to some the planet) if she did not eat the 300 cals in the first place and then still drove her Prius instead of biking”.
The point still stands. Most people, except long distance runners (OK, we’ll go with that one), eat food irrespective of whether they need it or not. They either cycle it off, walk it off, put it on their waist-line, or it gets flushed right through. That’s why there are so many fat people in the UK and in the USA.
Thought for the day – Ken Livingstone, in the days before he was mayor of London, did a TV advert in which he pointed out that many rich people have more calorific content in their faeces than some peasants eat in certain parts of the world.
It’s not only people that leave the centers for the suburbs; so do jobs.
The false premise here is that SGers think all jobs are in the CBD. The issue is closing the live-work gap. Not the live-downtown work gap.
In general, falling gas consumption and increasing auto VMT is a nightmare for the Smart Growthers; leaving aside the planning implications, less money in the HTF mass transit set aside means less money for boutique PT projects.
Huh. Falling gas consumption is bad for SGers. Evidence please.
DS
FC: “…or it gets flushed right through.â€Â
A fraction of the extra calories do come out but not all of them (I said so in original post). Look at med literature, ratio is 10-30%. Eventually overweight people burn more calories to maintain the extra tissue and because every motion that they make requires more energy. So a 20% overweight person burns 20% more calories when he jogs. If you ingest even a mere 300 extra calories per day, you gain about 30 lbs per year. Clearly an unsustainable situation. BTW, on average, overweight people may even eat less total calories during a lifetime because they simply live less. And contrary to prevailing popular belief they also consume less total helthcare and pension benefits, again, by living less.
but are they as productive if they are overwieght and/or unhealthy?
Another factor overlooked by Ms. Camphoy is that Americans, and their jobs, just don’t stay put. Contrary to the opinions of the “city planners and other experts†relied upon by the writer, people aren’t “migrating back to their workplaces†— they’re migrating along with their workplaces, or to new ones, or creating their own, without regard for the subsidized bennies offered by the smart growthers. In New Jersey, where transportation and planning policies have essentially been made by the Bloustein School at Rutgers for the past 15 years and every form of subsidized TOD has been implemented, people and their jobs (a third of nation’s January job loss was in NJ) can’t get out of the state fast enough. Until the planning community achieves command-and-control abilities, drivers will adapt and VMT will increase.
High Gasoline Prices and Mortality From Motor Vehicle Crashes and Air Pollution.
Leigh and Geraghty 2008. Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine 50:3 pp. 249-254
Abstract
DS