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A gallon of regular gas is about $3 on average nationwide. Yet
Americans are not changing their driving habits—and telling pollsters
they are spending less on other stuff (restaurant meals, movies, toys)
in order to keep up their high-mileage lifestyles. Hopeless? Not
necessarily.
I had a long, productive conversation a few evenings ago with TEI staffer Sonya Maali. We tried to list some of the reasons Americans aren’t using the gas price signal to change their consumption behavior. Most of the things we came up with were things individuals can’t do very much about qua individuals in the short term:
- Driving to work. Commuting to the workplace probably takes the biggest toll on an individual’s budget. Many Americans have long ago past the so-called Marchetti Constant—the presumed universal travel time budget of around one hour per person per day—or live in congested, car-saturated cities. What are the options for reducing commuting time? First, of course, you can buy a more fuel efficient car, but that requires capital outlay and finding a vehicle that can also accommodate other needs (carting children, etc.). You can leave the car home and take public transport. If there’s convenient mass transit available, which often there is not.
As Sonya pointed out, many middle class Americans have built up a prejudice about mass transit. Routes are often inadequate. It can be slower than going by car. Weather is a factor. Some people consider public buses transport for poor people or are afraid of what or whom they might encounter on a bus. Even when there is mass transit available, it can mean driving to the bus stop or train station or park and ride, and then fending on the other end for a way to get from the station to work.
For millions of construction workers, they have to bring their tools with them, and because of the way we produce housing and commercial buildings on site, they have no option but to drive up to 100 miles each way to the work site, mostly in pickup trucks.
Finally, a lot of people now seal themselves up in their cars, talk on the cell phone, have an unregulated smoke, or listen to the radio or music: in other words, commuting by car has become a lonely pleasure, so people don’t necessarily mind either traffic congestion or the ridiculous amount of time they have to spend behind the wheel just to get home.
- Driving the kids. Sonya noted that a lot of suburban and even city parents now drive their kids to school in the morning and/or pick them up in the afternoon, and that this is one reason American continue to favor gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles. Used to be, of course, that if kids lived at a distance from their school, they would have a school bus, and if they lived close by, they walked or rode a bike. Nowadays, school budgets have constrained bus service and children have become too lazy to make it a few blocks to the school. Also, schools have been segmented by age groups, so that families sometimes have three children going to three different schools in three different places. Finally, Sonya observed, there’s a new fear factor involved in parents’ overprotective behavior. Parents have been brainwashed, mostly by local TV news and local newspapers, into believing that our neighborhoods are awash in pedophiles, rapists and kidnappers, and that it’s too dangerous to let kids get to school on their own. It ain’t so, but it’s a good reason why people now drive their kids to school, play dates, the mall and everywhere.
- Zoning. When you think about it, the local laws that govern where you can build what, served us better 100 years ago, when we were trying to separate noxious factories from residential neighborhoods, than they do now. Now, zoning laws for the most part impose driving on every minute errand and necessity: you can only build residences in this part of town, which means everyone has to drive to the supermarket, to the job, to a restaurant, to the post office—to the gas station. If we lived where we worked, or near where we worked, think of how much less driving we’d have to do. If we had more mixed use zoning, with shops interspersed with residential developments, we could get a newspaper or a quart of milk without having to move a 5,000 pound machine. The separation of our activities into legal zones leaves most of us with few options—except to relocate nearer to work, school, mass transit, shopping, the library, etc. Most Americans are not prepared to do that in the short-term, especially given the fact that many American cities don’t offer much better transport options anyway.
- Urban sprawl. As the beltways and freeways expanded and became the main factor in land use in this country, car-dependent suburbs became the norm. Starting with the Baby Boom generation, Americans have started to act as though there is no other viable option to the jumbo house and three-car garage. The suburban lifestyle has brought real and imagined benefits and conveniences that are now deeply ingrained in the American psyche as representing the pinnacle of our culture. Gas at $3 is not going to tear down the wall of hubris—that what most people consider the way things will go on forever is already proving unsustainable after 50 years.
Those of us who try to study the reasons underlying economic behavior should not despair because Americans don’t seem to be abandoning their cars as a result of increasing gasoline prices. In fact, Federal Highway Administration data shows a stagnation in total miles driven over the last year and a half, for the first time in 25 years.
It’s a start. It will take not only price signals but good transport and lifestyle alternatives to challenge the automobile’s complete dominance.
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