$4 Gas Continues to Change American Habits
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in GasThere’s more and more evidence that $4.00 a gallon gasoline is the magic number for getting Americans to cut back on fuel consumption.
In April, Americans drove 1.4 billion fewer highway miles than they drove in April of 2007.
And things are trending to even less driving with the drop in April being three times greater than the drop in driving between March 2007 and March of this year.
The question is, if gas were to decline back to the $3 range or lower, would Americans keep up their new habits or would we all revert to using as much gas as we please?
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June 19th, 2008 at 9:32 am
So lets say you have 100 million American’s who drive every day (I’m guess that number is higher), and they each drive 10 miles (again, I’m guess the number is higher), that comes out to 1 billion miles per day. Over a thirty day month, thats 30 billion miles. Of course, that doesn’t factor in shipping, air travel, or the petrol products used to create essentially everything we eat, wear, consume, or use. But that 1.4 billion fewer miles comes out to a whopping decrease of 4.66%
Whoop-dee-do!
So I’m supposed to take it to mean that a 4.66% decrease in just average daily driving is a real cut-back? Give me a break. If the number was, oh I don’t know, 20 billion miles less, than maybe I’d see it as something. But less than 5%?
The truth is, we’ll bitch a lot about gas prices, but we’ll keep right on paying them because we dont want to give up our cars.
To that end, I’ve put only 926 miles on my car this year. Preferring to bus, bike, walk, or jog anywhere I have to go. In return, I’ve saved a boatload of money, and gotten a much better set of abs.
June 19th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
The math is actually even more underwhelming, TheMiddle. There’s actually about 240 milllion motor vehicles on the roads these days. That means that the average car was driven about 60 miles less over the course of a month. That’s right: two piddly miles a day. That’s consolodating two errands into one trip. That’s going to the coffee shop you don’t like as much just because it’s on the way. That’s buying two milks instead of one so that you don’t have to run to the grocery mid-week.
The DOT said that vehicle miles fell by 1.8 percent. During that time, prices rose 21%. Americans are still spending far more on gas than they used to, even if they’re not driving as much. Personally, I think that if prices returned to their 2007 levels, gas consumption would actually exceed 2007 levels. Back then, $3 a gallon was expensive. Now, it would seem dirt cheap and people would revert to the habits they had curtailed when it first approached that level.
By the way, thanks for blogging on transportation issues.