Rising gas prices, rising mass transit usage
As Paul Mison notes, the gas price surge is finally driving Americans to use more public transit, but not exactly at a breathtaking rate:
But … as of 2005, only 4.7 percent of American workers took mass transit to work. So even a 10% surge in mass transit ridership would take only around half a percent of drivers off the road.
Sure, usage is higher in Europe, but people always attribute that to higher population density. But does that explain it away?
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Anyway, Canada has lots of open space, too — and it doesn’t even have $8 a gallon gas. Yet it still has usable public transit in a lot more cities than we do.
Fortunately, we'll have Chrysler pulling up the rear on this one:Canadian gasoline is somewhat more expensive than in the US — but not European-level expensive. Otherwise, Canada looks a lot like America, and Toronto almost speaks the same language, eh? Yet a high-quality transit system and different land-use planning make a big difference.
What’s more, as far as I can make out from the data, a lot more Canadians than Americans (as a percentage of the population) have switched to public transit over the past year; because the system is there, they have more flexibility.
All in all, this comparison is a reason not to believe apocalyptic warnings about the long-run effects of energy scarcity: there’s a lot of substitution possible. America’s main problem is that we have a capital stock — cars, public infrastructure, and housing — designed for dirt-cheap oil. And the transition may be nasty.
But even the Wall Street Journal doesn't think it's a good deal. They go on to say:As an alternative to the standard incentives, the company is offering $2.99 gasoline for the next three years to those buying selected new models. And you can get the cheap gas at almost any station, as it is subsidized through your credit card.
Well, actually I do think prices are going to rocket, but nevermind, they anticipate my objections:The bottom line? In most cases consumers are probably going to be better off taking the standard rebate than going for the subsidized gas. The savings on Let's Refuel America really only start to stack up if you think gasoline prices are going to rocket a lot higher in the years ahead.
Exactly. But, err....And if you think that's going to happen, what are you doing blowing, say, $29,000 on a brand new SUV that gets 15 miles to the gallon? You'd be better off scaling back to a secondhand Civic and ploughing your savings into a good energy fund.
...it's $3.69 at the cheap places down the street from my house, and pushing $3.85 elsewhere. I recently had what I expect to be my last sub-$50 full tank fillup, and can remember not so long ago when I could fill up my first car for under $10.The gas price would have to average more than $4.10 a gallon over the next three years before it made sense to take the subsidized gasoline.
I fully expect gas prices to hover in the low $4 range by fall, and only go up from there. Apparently, or so the article says, the gasoline futures market disagrees with me, but we'll see, won't we?
(On the flip side, when I first read about this program, I was worried that it was just going to stimulate consumption and exacerbate the problem, but apparently they cap how much fuel you can buy based on the projected mileage of the model you purchases, so that's less bad than I thought. Not great, but less bad.)
Next up, thoughts on Fareed Zakaia's the rise of the rest, but I'll save that for tomorrow, as it's now time to go play Boom Blox on the Wii. Yay escapism...
This post is very annoying to me. You must not know any poor people. We use our car for our work, buying and selling antiques, and gas is a HUGE expense for us. I agree that it has to go up so that alternatives are more viable, but the transition is extremely painful for us. We don’t visit friends, much less health clubs! Cable TV? Forget about it! Eating out? More like a big pot of soup that lasts 3 or 4 days. Where we live people drive 30 to 50 miles a day one way to work if they want to make more than 8 bucks an hour.
