[B’ Spokes: great news for cyclists:]
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from Getting There by Michael Dresser
… The Maryland average stands at $3.02 today. … She said some analysts fear that if crude oil continues to rise at its current pace, the average price could reach $3.75 by spring. …
https://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/traffic/2010/12/national_gas_price_average_bre.htmloldId.20101223185040673
2 Replies to “National gas price average breaks $3 barrier”
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I disagree completely. If gasoline reached $100 per gallon, would that be absolutely stupendous news for bikers? Only for bikers who were indifferent to anything in their lives other than the ratio of cars to bikes on the road.
Like many bikers I am also a driver. Second, like all bicyclists in the US I am a participant in a society which for better or worse is currently deeply tied into fossil fuel use. My bike was certainly shipped to Baltimore on a truck. Most of my friends and co-workers, nice people, drive to work every day. Expensive gas will worsen their quality of life. I’m pleased that I was able to drive to visit family for Christmas, in a small town not served by mass transit. Gasoline also brings my food to the store; I don’t like for grocery prices to increase, but I can bear it better than many of my fellow Baltimoreans.
Sure, I wish that biking was easier, and mass transit more plentiful, in Baltimore and elsewhere. And expensive gas may help bring that about. But gasoline improves my life and other people’s lives. One reason I bike is to save this precious resource for as long as possible.
Also, as a matter of advocacy, I doubt it serves the cause of bicycling to celebrate hardship for drivers, on the tenuous grounds that it might have a positive impact on biking down the line.
I’m not sure where to start in response. Long rang plans include projected travel models, which usually say we are going to have nightmarish traffic in 10 years unless we build a lot more roads and a lot more roads then what we have money for are needed.
But then ask a simple question, what will be the projected price of gasoline in 10 years?
A reasonable guess of between $5 to $10 a gallon and all of a sudden all that projected traffic disappears.
It should be obvious that providing transportation options would be the smart way to go as the “cost” of this vs to only building roads is rather minor and has the additional benefit of taking cars off our all ready crowded road system.
Anyway the lack of stability in the costs/availability of gasoline has been traditionally the main motivator of more transportation options as well as better planning. Some how the US feels the status quo can be maintained indefinitely and $3.75 will just be a temporary hiccup and we will get back to $2 a gallon soon enough.
But I am not so sure:
