1. Aaron Kerry | 08.13.08

Transporatation Secretary Mary Peters is yet another Bush appointee who is completely out of her depth. She probably shouldn’t have risen any higher than holding up a sign for a high school car wash on Leesburg Pike.

2. Bruce Lierman | 08.13.08

How much can we cut back on miles driven before it “affects our lifestyle”? That’s just the issue, isn’t it? In many cases, our “lifestyles” are ridiculous. How many cars do you still see on the streets with only one occupant? How many times today were you passed by a car doing more than the speed limit? If you passed a bicyclist, or worse yet were delayed because you couldn’t pass one momentarily (they have the legal right to take the whole lane, you know), did you wish they weren’t there, even though they were saving gas you can burn? Would you like to show me how to walk or bicycle safely to the Tyson’s corner, Virginia, Mall of the Americas, or White Plains shopping malls? Planning to take your ATV, power boat, or dirt bike out for a little recreational riding this weekend?
At the most conservative, I estimate we could reduce our mileage by at least fifty percent without eliminating any necessary trips or building new infrastructure. As to our lifestyle - well, to paraphrase one of our supreme court justices, there is nothing in the constitution that guarantees your right to all the gasoline you can waste. Time to break some bad habits, and be better off for it.

3. Richard Bruce | 08.14.08

Yes we can cut back quite a bit. I talk on the phone rather than travel by car, shop closer to home, and car pool for shopping trips. The possiblities are endless.

4. Mike Higgins | 08.14.08

No one should be surprised about the reduction in miles driven by the American people. It was quite predictable. It was a natural market response to gasoline becoming more expensive. This is simply supply and demand economics. Notice that all this occurred without passing new government taxes (besides the built-in increase of state and federal taxes which are calculated as a percentage of the selling price). This is the way free markets act when prices increase.

This is exactly why there is no need to worry about suddenly running out of oil. As oil becomes more scarce, its price in the marketplace will gradually rise, people will make other choices and new energy technologies will become more viable - all without uninformed bureaucrats trying to decide which technologies will be best by taxing the poor and middle class disproportionately in order to subsidize rich corporate executives who earn their living by lobbying Congress for handouts stolen from those who are less fortunate.

The federal government needs to get out of the subsidy business for all commodities. Hundreds, if not thousands, of private technology industries already have great incentives to develop alternative fuels and they always do it in a more efficient way than governments can.

Look at the disaster of passing laws requiring ethanol in gasoline. These laws artificially increased demand for corn and driven the cost of food derived from corn to unprecedented heights. Let’s eat our food and burn our fuel, and not vice-versa. And let’s stop subsidizing technologies by taking money from the poor and middle class and give it to rich corporations and corporate executives. Let’s make them earn it fair and square!

5. IH | 08.14.08

@Bruce:

There are several Northern Virginia bus routes that will take you right to Tyson’s Corner from any of a number of WMATA metrorail stations. In fact, the in-progress metrorail extension to Dulles will also run through Tyson’s.

6. Lee Brewer | 08.14.08

Bicycling is a realistic solution in areas with lower population or developed bike trails. Contrastingly, it is a less attractive and perhaps downright dangerous in those Eastern United States areas that are replete with higher density family concentrations. Here in New Jersey, our “tiny community” has more than 70K people resident, and there is no open land between our town and the adjacent towns. More than half of workers travel long distances on old, narrow, scenic roads (really paved Indian footpaths) twice a day. Additionally we have the usual supply trucks, service vans, and school buses wobbling along these roads.

I like recreational bicycling in my immediate housing area and walking in our parks. Yet the nearest “safe” longer bicycle trails are more than 22 miles away. Regretfully my state of “green” must be expressed in better, safer ways. I haven’t seen any positive near term changes in commuters, but have noted fewer peddlers and more cars as large nearby corporations relocated to the lower cost labor areas. In our area we’ll have to adapt to high gas prices by shifting our driving means into less gas-gulping cars.

7. jMary Dyer | 08.14.08

In the rural west there is no reasonable alternative to a car or truck.

but I am noting more usage of the Internet, e mail “visiting” download video and electronic Kindle books, instead of distant and frequent trips to town for “entertainment”

and since we arent living generally in tiny urban “living units” elbow room leaves us with much more housing space to stock up with food and household necessities, once a month supermarket shopping, which also makes major reduction for impulse shopping, tempting luxuries not on our monthly stock up lists

8. Joshua Rose | 08.14.08

I have to agree that the biggest obstacle for myself riding a bike is the risk. I live in Phoenix where it is the norm to go 10-15 over the speed limit. That combined with being the most spread out city I have ever lived in makes biking not the greatest option. However, I have noticed biking lanes being developed slowly but surely. I look forward to the day when all streets have a biking lane.

9. Bob Williams | 08.14.08

Good comment Bruce. I’d like to expound on the insanity of the American living arrangement at the risk of offending 99% of the country.

Eoin posits that this is at least partially an infrastructure crisis. This is COMPLETELY an infrastructure crisis. Here is the thing, the vast majority of the people wanted it this way! The walkable cities (walkability is nothing new!) were forsaken starting 60 years ago in a tremendous display of isolationalism and consumption seemingly without limits.

To quote the article:

“If more of us had access to public transit, if more of our neighborhoods had sidewalks and safe bike lanes, if more of us could buy our necessities on Main Street instead of at the strip mall on the outskirts of town, then our baseline would be lower, and maybe the spike in gas prices wouldn’t hit us so hard.”

I consider this to be a pathetic statement. It is precisely the behavior of America at large, their wants and desires for degraded community, that made America take on this retarded geography. We put our main streets out of business during the cheap-oil fiesta because the Walmart model offered an attractive price point and the convenience of one-stop shopping.

I don’t even like the implications inherent in “had access.” It sounds as though somebody else is to blame, which is a common theme in today’s United States.

Here’s the reality, people can pontificate all they want about walkable communities, but nobody is coming with free money to fix all of suburbia’s myriad design flaws. People need to vote with their feet and their money instead of clinging to an obsolete living arrangement.

10. JC | 08.14.08

Okay I am totally fed up with this nonsense. If I was a political cartoonist I would draw a picture of an oil baron santa whipping his cyclist reindeer. This is total BS.

I turn on the news the other day and there are about 350 cyclists waiting to ride in front of a starting line. I’m like “oh wow look at these people getting ready to ride for cancer, aids, diabetes etc”.. WRONG! The reporter walks up to these people and asks them what they are there for. One cyclists responds with a “we’re just here to promote bicycles” and then they all take off down the road smiling like a bunch of lemmings.

Wow. The Oil barons really have us by the [Eoin’s note: Ahem. I took this word out. Would it kill you people to keep it clean?] now don’t they? People are actually excited to ride bicycles. Since when do people actually want to ride a bicycle?!?! If that’s not a sign of an economic resession then I don’t know what is.

I just want to point out to all of you loons out there that BICYCLES ARE NOT AUTOMOBILES!!!!!!!!! They are not an adequate substitute for a vehicle! Not everyone lives in new york where they can simply walk to work. A large majority of americans actually need a vehicle to make it to work. They need a vehicle to go shopping. They need to go see relatives. They need to drive freely! A huge chunk of americans still live in rural areas and just cannot simply jump on a bicycle.

I hereby boycott bicycles. I refuse to be Santas little helper. We need to invest in our own oil reserves and alternative energies… not buy streamlined helmits and use our arms as blinkers.. “Oh look at me I don’t need a blinker I can just use my arm yaaaay”.. “hey steve I just got a great deal on reflectors for my 5000 dollars bike” “hey man can’t you see that I’m doing 12 in a 35?” you make me sick. Do the the rest of us evil driving americans a favor and get out of the street please. Seriously. We wanna do the speed limit.

GIVE ME TRANSPORTATION OF GIVE ME DEATH! (well not death but atleast not a bicycle)

11. Clif Brown | 08.14.08

I live in an old suburb of Chicago and have been riding a bike and walking for years. Grocery stores (2), post office, restaurants, car rental, coffee shops, library, office supply, rail and bus stations etc. are all within half a mile. I’ve always seen cars as a huge sink for money and pointless for individual transportation. Winter or summer I ride and don’t put on special clothes to do it.

Lately, the town has been racing to paint bike lanes on the pavement and has been putting up little signs for cyclists but it seems a waste to me. The residential streets are as open to bikes as always yet few are seen on two wheels. With the hope of encouraging people, I’ve put a hand-made sign on a milk-crate on the back of my bike. It says:

BIKES!!!
A Free Ride since 1885
(try it and pass gas)

All that is lacking around here is the willingness to take the plunge.

12. Joe | 08.14.08

GIVE ME TRANSPORTATION OR GIVE ME DEATH!

JC that’s quite a statement. Good thing American’s were endowed by their Creator’s with feet so they could travel “freely” as you say. Do yourself a favor and decide on an energy policy, if you really need to drive so badly know right now gas is not going to get any cheaper, it’ll go up and down but it’s going to mostly up. So if you hate bicycles think about walking or talking the bus for some trips, car pool. Buy a car that gets better mileage or think electric, support new technology that will let us all “drive more freely” and JC give the bike riders a break, their riding means more driving for you.

13. Lee | 08.15.08

How about you? Do you have to drive to get to the supermarket?
No.

To get to work?
No.

To visit your friends and family?
No.

To attend your place of worship, if you have one?
And no.

JC: with this statement, “A large majority of americans actually need a vehicle to make it to work,” you only reinforce the whole argument of this article. It’s an infrastructure problem. The large majority of americans should not need a car to do everything. Looking at the last 50 years, I could only guess that at this rate in another 50 we’ll need to drive for 10 minutes to get to the bathroom! But of course bicycles and walking alone are not going to solve the problem — we’re going to have to build our way out of this or else sink even heavier subsidies into oil and roads to keep people driving.

People can’t bicycle and walk or take the train unless that’s an option where they live. New York City is not the only place where people have real transportation choices. As Clif notes, there are plenty of walkable small towns and suburbs across the country. Or look at Europe, where people have drastically less need to drive.

It’s estimated that 30% of the housing stock that will exist in 2030 still has yet to be built. We have to choose what kind of communities we want to build.

14. Jeremy Jones | 08.15.08

I want to start by commenting on the Gas tax statement made by Mike Higgins in an earlier post (above), as quoted below:

“Notice that all this occurred without passing new government taxes (besides the built-in increase of state and federal taxes which are calculated as a percentage of the selling price).”

This is a common misconception by many. The gas tax is a fixed cents per Gallon. While we have cost of living increases and inflation, the tax remains fixed. The federal rate is 18.4 cents per gallon, and hasn’t increased since 1990. The rates for each stae varies by the state. This is not a percentage of the price you pay this is the amound you pay in taxes for every gallon of gas you buy.

Please note that roadways are generally either concrete (the white colored pavement) or asphalt the (black colored pavement). Asphalt uses crude oil in its production. So, while the tax has remained the same for 18 years, the tax-dollars purchacing power has declined rapidly due to increasing crude oil prices, inflation, cost of living, etc. In short, our money available for maintaining the existing streets is much less in terms of gallons burned in vehicles. (Which should translate to miles driven, but with more efficient vehicles that has gone down as well… which is a good thing, but we’ll save that discussion for another time.)

As for transit. This is funding that is a very good investment, but it is not set up to include the maintenance of roadways, which is used by the transit authorities as well as other drivers. The gas tax is split among the different funds, one of which is the highway trust fund. Maintenance of the roadways and Highways is financed through the highway trust fund. I don’t necessarily agree with (nor disagree with) the proposal to borrow money from transit, but I do understand it is complicated enough that the suggestion cannot be discredited as easily as one might think.

15. David | 08.15.08

What some of you anti-car zealots don’t understand is that a virtually all funding for “alternative transportation” systems comes from…. you guessed it - FEDERAL GASOLINE TAXES!!! Less driving means less $$ for mass transit, sidewalks and bike lanes. SUV gas guzzling hogs and all car/commercial vehicles have been supporting “alternative transportation” for decades. No mass transit system in the US is even self-supporting after our gas taxes pays for its construction! Until our PATHETIC CONGRESS gets off it’s duff/vacation/junkets and tackles the truly difficult decisions of transportation funding for all modes, we’re all screwed.

16. greenfoolishness | 08.15.08

Why am I reading this foolish socialist drivel? Go ahead and walk, ride your bikes, take buses, live in communes, inflate your tires, whatever…just don’t force it down the throats of the republic. Market forces will/are taking care of it.

17. rzzip | 08.15.08

Though greenfoolishness may not have intended to, he/she actually raises a good point.

We should unleash market forces on transportation. I think if we did so we would have a fundamentally different system that you see today. The notion that road users pay their own way in a free market is inaccurate, to say the least.

The reality is that today, in America, roads do not even come close to paying for themselves. Driving is heavily subsidized by the public sector (is this what you mean by “socialist drivel”, greenfoolishness?).

This is a quote from the Texas Department of Transportation’s website (not exactly a left wing splinter group, them):

[Their own methodology] … revealed that no road pays for itself in gas taxes and fees. For example, in Houston, the 15 miles of SH 99 from I-10 to US 290 will cost $1 billion to build and maintain over its lifetime, while only generating $162 million in gas taxes. That gives a tax gap ratio of .16, which means that the real gas tax rate people would need to pay on this segment of road to completely pay for it would be $2.22 per gallon. This is just one example, but there is not one road in Texas that pays for itself based on the tax system of today. Some roads pay for about half their true cost, but most roads we have analyzed pay for considerably less. To conclude, in the SH 99 example, since the traffic volume for that road doesn’t generate enough fuel tax revenue to pay for it, revenues from other parts of the state must be used to build and maintain this corridor segment.

The current U.S. Department of transportation says that fuel taxes now represent less than 50% of the revenue generated for highway expenditures. In 1994, the federal government estimated that “pure” subsidies to automobile and truck users in the US range from as low as $300 billion to as high as $935 billion annually – nearly a trillion dollars a year.

So I agree with greenfoolishness that we should stop socializing the highway network.

18. rzzip | 08.15.08

David: only 13 percent of the revenues used for transit came from the federal gas tax in 2006 (see: exhibit 5-8 here http://www.transportationfortomorrow.org/final_report/pdf/volume_2_chapter_5.pdf)

But this point is definitely correct: “Less driving means less $$ for mass transit, sidewalks and bike lanes.” Because 85% of the money in the federal highway trust fund comes from the gas tax, more driving means more revenues while more transit means more expenses.

On the other hand more driving means more externalized costs and more transit means less externailzed costs. Therefore we depend on poor public outcomes to generate cash, and incur more expenses to generate public benefits. Our financing challenge is to better align costs with desirable public outcomes.

19. John Z Wetmore | 08.16.08

While there may be buses that can get you to Tysons Corner, VA, it can be quite difficult to get around by foot once you are there. The intersection of Route 7 and Route 123, which some might consider to be THE crossroads of Tysons Corner, has no provision at all for pedestrians — no sidewalks, no crosswalks, no pedestrian signals.

Even if VDOT were ever to build all the missing sidewalks in Tysons Corner, you would still have to cross intersections that are very unfriendly for pedestrians.

Tysons Corner is very typical of suburban areas that were built with no thought at all given to pedestrians. Fixing all that infrastructure will take a lot more than just putting in sidewalks.

20. Aln | 08.17.08

Personally, I’m not dragging my 8 month old twins on a bus. I’d rather work harder to buy gas than deal with that hassle. Dragging two kids and a stroller and a diaper bag? Oh and when I shop how exactly can I get the food home?

Now lets talk about safety. My car doesn’t move with the kids in proper child restraints. Even if I wasn’t conscientious Johnny law would put me in jail if I somehow forgot. I have yet to see a city bus with any way to properly restrain adults, much less children.

For those of you who can walk or take mass transit, or ride a bike great. Perhaps you should walk a mile in everyone else’s shoes before you suggest what the rest of us do.

21. John Z Wetmore | 08.18.08

A balanced transportation system gives people choices, so they can choose the best mode of transport for each trip they make. Sometimes the best choice will be to drive an automobile. Hopefully there will be some trips where another mode makes sense. If the only practical choice for every trip is to drive an automobile, it really isn’t a “choice” at all when there are no alternatives.

When your twins turn 15, does the design of your neighborhood allow them to walk or bike to see their friends, or go to school, or play in the park, or buy a popsicle on a warm day? Or is Mom condemned to be a chauffeur for every single trip until they turn 16 and the family budget is strained to buy them each their own car with its own gas tank?

Isn’t there a problem with the design of the system when the 30 percent of the population that does not drive (whether too young, or old, or disabled, or impoverished, or for whatever reason)is totally dependent on someone who does drive for every trip they make for whatever reason every single day?

22. jerry rubin | 08.18.08

If we had the will, we could create the infrastructure starting now in most cities to have mass transit meet almost all our needs. Each shopping center can be gotten to as a satellite village, the same concept that is used in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Paris, London, etc. The problem is that we believed in the Eisenhower and Ford concept that we must have “Freedom” and access to everything, even our national parks for everyone, even if they are by themselves.

23. Mark | 08.20.08

This is a question my wife and I applied to ourselves nearly two months ago. Well, we’re trying to find out. We’ve managed to shift over 650 miles from the car to our bikes, feet and local transit. How many more miles have we saved by not making those spur of the moment quick trips to get this or that, who knows.

Our blog tracking this: http://gettinaroundpnw.blogspot.com/

Infrastructure is certainly a problem with lack of truly comprehensive regional transit systems, non-existent or declining rail transit systems in some areas and a laser focus on increasing the capacity of roads to move more cars. There’s more to it than that. It’s the American attitude in general. Americans, by and large, love our cars. We are also hooked on the convenience they offer to the degree that many of us would rather jump in a car and sit in traffic than wait ten minutes for a bus to get us where we need to go (often using transit lanes).

Granted it takes re-training ourselves to forgo the car and use other means of transportation. It’s certainly easier to go grocery shopping by car than by bus. That doesn’t mean these things aren’t do-able.

24. Rog in Miami | 12.23.08

I often here this excuse: I’m not going to take my young children on the bus. Funny, thousands of mothers around the world MUST do that daily. I use my bicycle and public transit to do just about everything. I only rent a vehicle to go out of town, and that’s only because my brother and his family live outside of the commuter rail range (if they lived near the line, I’d be taking the train and bicycling the rest of the way). I witness moms and dads using public transit with their children all the time, and the kids have a blast. Kids love Bicycles, trains and buses for some reason. When I have children, they’re going to be using transit because the last thing I want is to raise over-pampered, spoiled brats who need mommy and daddy to drive them everywhere.

Now, another poster mentioned that the market will dictate people’s choices, but did he/she miss the whole point that even with DECREASED gas prices at the pump, Americans are still driving less. How exactly is that an argument for free-marketism? I just think that Americans are driving less because we are — for the most part — beginning to reassess what is really important. I honestly believe that the over-priced, house-in-the-suburb, box-mart living mantra is becoming tired. Americans want more out of life, but less materialism. We’re simply becoming more enlightened, and yes, moving from a me-based world to thinking about the future of the whole of humanity IS enlightenment. That’s not up for interpretation.