thoughts on vehicle choices
May. 15th, 2006 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdLast week's sad, pathetic tokens: 0.5
Sunday's miles: 3.0
Miles out of Hobbiton: 819.3
Miles out of Rivendell: 359.5
Miles to Lothlórien: 106.9
This story on Americans griping about gas prices while buying new SUVs shows that Americans have no actual interest in backing off gasoline consumption.
The key to this isn't absolute gasoline price; it's in percentage of income, I think. The article quotes a J.D. Power analyst as saying, "Prices have to get to $4 and maybe even higher—and stay there for at least a year—before we'll see a substantial shift in what we drive." Given, according to the article, that 4.5% of household budgets to go fuels and in the last major fuels crisis - the one that actually caused a behavioural shift - that number reached nine percent, I think the target price is pretty clear. At $6/gallon, sustained, or somewhere around $140/barrel, you'll start to see a shift in consumer choices. Alternatively, real incomes could drop significantly, achieving the same effect.1
Again quoting the article, "today's cars average 12,190 miles on the road annually, up 24 percent from 1980, according to federal statistics." That doesn't include the fact that average car ownership count per person has risen as well - about 15% since 1980 - indicating that car miles driven per person is actually up an astounding 42.6%, rather than 24%, a more meaningful number than miles driven per car.
Looked at another way - at per-household rather than per-person - the average household had 1.66 cars as of 2000, whereas the 1980 number was 1.56, a 6.3% rise in average vehicles per household. Since the number of miles driven per vehicle is up 24%, and the number of vehicles per household is up just over 6.3%, we also know that the per-household increase is about 32% - or, that households are driving around 20,235 miles per year against 1980's 15,336 miles/year, an addition of close to 5,000 miles per year.2
And people wonder why there's an obesity epidemic amoungst children.
So. Anyone looking for a behavioural change now has some ideas about when they can expect to see it: at $140/barrel oil, or $6/gallon gasoline. But, all other things equal, not very much before.
1This is complicated by the fact that the Baby Boomers are pretty much at their peak earning potential, and are rolling in dough. So as their incomes are dragging the average up. And since their incomes are high, their choices are made accordingly. These two factors may cancel each other out, but it's hard to tell. Historically, being at this age, they'd be low on debt and high on savings - but the Boomers haven't saved much of anything for retirement. The number of factors this complicates make meaningful predictions (in this, and many, many other matters) difficult, so I'm sticking with the raw numbers.
2Interestingly to me only, this more than two and a half times as much driving as Anna and I do every year, meaning that our percentage of budget spent on gasoline should be around 1.8%, against the national average of 4.5%. Our total driving is only 1.6 times the increase per family since 1980, and extrapolating backwards using numbers I don't have all of (and estimating conservatively), is roughly equal to the increase in driving since 1970, per household. At $3.24/gallon, which is what I measured in North Seattle last Tuesday, I would predict that we'd spend about $864 a year on gasoline.
Sunday's miles: 3.0
Miles out of Hobbiton: 819.3
Miles out of Rivendell: 359.5
Miles to Lothlórien: 106.9
This story on Americans griping about gas prices while buying new SUVs shows that Americans have no actual interest in backing off gasoline consumption.
The key to this isn't absolute gasoline price; it's in percentage of income, I think. The article quotes a J.D. Power analyst as saying, "Prices have to get to $4 and maybe even higher—and stay there for at least a year—before we'll see a substantial shift in what we drive." Given, according to the article, that 4.5% of household budgets to go fuels and in the last major fuels crisis - the one that actually caused a behavioural shift - that number reached nine percent, I think the target price is pretty clear. At $6/gallon, sustained, or somewhere around $140/barrel, you'll start to see a shift in consumer choices. Alternatively, real incomes could drop significantly, achieving the same effect.1
Again quoting the article, "today's cars average 12,190 miles on the road annually, up 24 percent from 1980, according to federal statistics." That doesn't include the fact that average car ownership count per person has risen as well - about 15% since 1980 - indicating that car miles driven per person is actually up an astounding 42.6%, rather than 24%, a more meaningful number than miles driven per car.
Looked at another way - at per-household rather than per-person - the average household had 1.66 cars as of 2000, whereas the 1980 number was 1.56, a 6.3% rise in average vehicles per household. Since the number of miles driven per vehicle is up 24%, and the number of vehicles per household is up just over 6.3%, we also know that the per-household increase is about 32% - or, that households are driving around 20,235 miles per year against 1980's 15,336 miles/year, an addition of close to 5,000 miles per year.2
And people wonder why there's an obesity epidemic amoungst children.
So. Anyone looking for a behavioural change now has some ideas about when they can expect to see it: at $140/barrel oil, or $6/gallon gasoline. But, all other things equal, not very much before.
1This is complicated by the fact that the Baby Boomers are pretty much at their peak earning potential, and are rolling in dough. So as their incomes are dragging the average up. And since their incomes are high, their choices are made accordingly. These two factors may cancel each other out, but it's hard to tell. Historically, being at this age, they'd be low on debt and high on savings - but the Boomers haven't saved much of anything for retirement. The number of factors this complicates make meaningful predictions (in this, and many, many other matters) difficult, so I'm sticking with the raw numbers.
2Interestingly to me only, this more than two and a half times as much driving as Anna and I do every year, meaning that our percentage of budget spent on gasoline should be around 1.8%, against the national average of 4.5%. Our total driving is only 1.6 times the increase per family since 1980, and extrapolating backwards using numbers I don't have all of (and estimating conservatively), is roughly equal to the increase in driving since 1970, per household. At $3.24/gallon, which is what I measured in North Seattle last Tuesday, I would predict that we'd spend about $864 a year on gasoline.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 05:52 pm (UTC)I mean, I don't *personally* use fuel at all. But not only do I get rides from
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:32 pm (UTC)(Rail uses about 1/10th as much diesel as a 16-wheeler on a per-pound.)
Total commercial traffic is currently around 10% of oil usage, also. But I don't know how much that has changed over the last few decades.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:10 pm (UTC)Not too sure of this,as I'm thinking with a fever...
no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:10 pm (UTC)While I agree with you that Americans drive too much, a lot of the extra mileage just comes from people living farther away from their jobs, either by choice (to live in lower-density areas e.g.) or because people can't afford to live near their jobs.
This all comes back to a combination of bad public transportation, unwillingness of people to bicycle commute, and the cultural stuff you sort of write about here.
Sure, the standard "Dutch bike" commuter bike works in Holland, because (a) people live no more than a couple miles from their work, (b) the country is flat as a proverbial pancake. And, yes, I'll grant you that (c) gas is probably $7 a gallon there and (d) owning a car is probably frightfully expensive in general.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 06:37 pm (UTC)Oh my god yes. The push into automobiles and away from walking, biking, transit, or any other form of moving around is built in to every level of our current society, from propaganda to tax structures to building codes at the local level - and in some cases, all the way down to neighbourhood covenants.
Cheap gas is a big one, but not the only one.
Indeed. Driving isn't just subsidised, it's a fetish; it's almost a state mandate. The "market" in this broader arena - how to get from point A to point B - is monumentally distorted at every level.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 08:57 pm (UTC)But it's kind of frustrating--there's one part of my bike commute that I can't figure out how to do, because biking on roads like Aurora is Just Right Out.
And Seattle's better than most cities in America for this sort of thing . . .
(not to mention the fact that the UW encourages alternate transportation, but then doesn't provide sufficient bike racks/lockers/etc. in the places where people take them seriously...)
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 09:16 pm (UTC)Okay. this not-updated map shows work announced as completed here. This map shows the planned extension of Fremont's bike lanes to 35th, and I think it should be done by now, but I can't be sure. If the problem is the zoo, then I recommend the Ravenna route instead.
Gosh, it'd be nice if they'd have a "current system" map somewhere, wouldn't it? One that wasn't last updated 2003? It's not like there's a database of this or anything.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 11:48 pm (UTC)It's less crazy than Aurora, but at certain times of day people start driving on it to bypass Aurora, and then it gets nuts. Plus, parked cars and lots of idiots.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-16 12:32 am (UTC)Well, eventually they'll finish the Interurban link. Eventually. :-p Hopefully sooner rather than later. I guess the only other alternative is to grab an Aurora bus for that section or something.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-15 08:31 pm (UTC)