Hurray for High Gas Prices!

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Originally posted by Sprayber
Riding a bike won't cut it either since I live several miles from where I work.

That's a non sequiter. I ride about nine miles each way to work and back.

I'm happy for you

Do you happen to have a three seater bicycle that the two kids could ride on behind me? Perhaps a really big basket in front to carry all the **** I have to have with me.

It's great that you can do all this. You are truly blessed and once upon a time I could as well but just because YOU can do this doesn't mean it's particularly easy for everyone else to be just like you

I'm not whining about gas. It's just how it is and somehow a person has to make choices to get by the best way they can with what choices they have before them. Some of you though can't really look beyond your own situation and see that not everyone has the same set of alternatives.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


To make an omelet you have to break some eggs .

No, no, no. You gotta convince the eggs to break themselves...

I too am pro-high gas prices, because the only way we will get the structural changes we need is to be forced into said changes. When owning an electric car is the smart choice for the average joe, the average joe will buy an electric car. And so on and so forth.

On the flipside, it sucks for those who are poor and yet are also dependant on cheap gas. More investment in public transit might help.

-Arrian

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly

But, again, the problem is that people live in spaces that were designed (by idiots) to be negotiated entirely by car. So even if people want to stop acting like idiots, they may find themselves trapped in structures that make that extremely difficult.

I find it pretty weird that people in this thread think that the problem will solve itself by people moving out of suburbs. Do you have any idea how much that will cost?

A house is a long term investment. Calculated into the price is the belief that it will be a viable dwelling for the long term future (people expect to resell most houses they buy). I'm not talking about what any particular individual pays, but what the house is expected to do over its lifetime (it might be owned by four or five different people). If suburbs and exurbs become uneconomical due to increasing fuel costs, then Americans will have effectively thrown away a fortune on housing. It will be literally the worst investment ever made. The cost will be felt in the construction of new compact housing units. They'll probably be chucked up slapdash and create new and awful urban slums.

This didn't have to happen. It was the result of deliberately stupid policy. Back in the 40s and 50s governments had a choice between modernist urban planning based on public transport hubs or developing suburban car based cities. In New Zealand, Auckland ended up throwing away a visionary public planning scheme in favour of developing a Californian style sprawl (wealthy real estate developers had a hand in mothballing the plan).

It turns out the central planners were right. Apartment blocks adjacent to public transport hubs turned out to be the best bet. The modernists were correct, and the politicians and the public were wrong.

It wouldn't be so bad if everyone was in the same boat, but it is Americans and Canadians who will bear the brunt, followed by Australians and New Zealanders. European and Asian countries will have it easy in comparison, since they have high density urban areas. The Asians will be better off than anyone.

People better hope the price goes down or at least remains stable.

[Ramo]

So, again, good development in the long term -- but hard to be happy about the genuine human misery (not just inconvenience) it's going to inflict on some people in the short term.

I don't think Levitt was talking about high gas prices, but high gas taxes. Obviously the former is bad (and forget about folks in Mississippi - let's talk about people in the third world who have issues with food distribution, etc.). The advantage to the latter is that only about half of the tax increase is felt by the consumer, while the government gets to pocket all of it. And some of those government revenues can go towards helping out the very poor, etc.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Caves of steel
Self-sustaining communities

[Imran Siddiqui]

He definitely is agitating for higher gas taxes, but I think Levitt was saying the high gas prices currently DO have some not insignificant positive effects.

[Agathon]

How much does the average American suburbanite drive per year?

5,000 miles? 10,000?

What is the length of the average suburban commute?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Agathon
How much does the average American suburbanite drive per year?

5,000 miles? 10,0000?

I think the "normal" or average or whatever milage is something like 12,000 miles a year. Though I drive much less than that on an annual basis.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

I think the "normal" or average or whatever milage is something like 12,000 miles a year. Though I drive much less than that on an annual basis.

Jesus Christ... it must be worse for people in the exurbs.

Don't you guys get about 22 mpg or something? That's a lot of money to spend on gasoline.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Hence the need for some tough love .

The smarter of us drive more like 8,000 miles a year and drive cars that get closer to 30 mpg.

[Arrian]

Dunno about averages...

Commute: 42 miles round trip. Mileage: ~34mpg. I'd say we put ~15000 miles/year on that car. Less on the other (~27mpg). We're lucky, though, because we commute together to the same building. Most couples who both work have separate commutes.

Heating oil is also a concern, of course. Last year we paid $2.54/gallon. This year will be over $4, I imagine. Not that it will help directly, but I'm looking into putting solar panels on my house.

-Arrian

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Hence the need for some tough love .

Fine, but what are you going to do about the wasted infrastructure? As I said above, that's a lot of money.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by SpencerH
I wonder whether high gas prices will effect our illegal problem? I think this may alter their perception of economic benefits to working in the USA.

The ones driving farm grade fuel don't see the higher prices for gas.

[Krill]

Originally posted by Spec


HYDROGEN GOD DAMNIT!!!

Every car out there can easily be converted to hydrogen.

Electric cars Hydrogen cars

Hydrogen power>Electrique power
Hydrogen engine sound>Electric engine sound
Source of power, both water at base
-Elctric engines produce magnetic fields
-Hydrogen engines produces vapor

Hydrogen>Electric. Get that through your thick hippy heads people!



Spec.

*insert personal insult about posters lack of knowledge here*

[Kidlicious]

Higher gas prices won't fix anything. That ship has sailed. We're going to be stuck paying out the ass for a long time. We should have done something long ago. I don't think just gas taxes would have been enough anyway. The real problem though is the lack of will to plan for the future in this country though. So saying that gas prices were too low missing the root of the problem.