Here’s how they fall:

• Rising gas prices cause Americans to drive less, a lot less. In April it was 1.8% less, in May 4.3%. 40 billion less miles this year.
• Less driving means less gas purchased
• Less gas purchased means lower tax revenues from gas taxes
• Gas taxes are commonly used for improvements to transportation infrastructure including desperately needed public transport systems, bridges, roads, etc.

Just another example of how our economy was built to support oil companies on every level, to the point where we cannot extract ourselves without major sacrifice.

I can either commute via the expressway or by taking a four lane road (East Ave) that makes its way through mostly residential neighborhoods into the downtown area where I live. It wouldn’t be a bad bike route except the fact that it has four lanes means a cyclist forces traffic in their lane to move into the left lane to pass the bike.

There is no reason to have four lanes on this road. If we took one lane and split it to make a bike lane on each side and then created a center turning lane we’d lose no driving convenience whatsoever. This would essentially only involve restriping the road to the new configuration.

Our city is criss-crossed with these four lane, 35mph arteries. A county-wide plan to create bike lanes would help change a lot of perceptions about bike commutes. We could even use them as scooter lanes for low-powered scooters with a low speed limit (20mph?).

With our winters I know there are skeptics about bike commuting. However those winters are getting shorter and fall and spring are great cycling weather periods. Competition with cars is a major factor when considering a commute. Dedicated lanes would help. They would also keep people riding on the correct side of the road (with the traffic). Riding against traffic or on sidewalks is a major safety issue because drivers don’t expect anything there.

My friend Franke does it again, riffing on her experience seeing Malcolm Gladwell and Mark Kingwell (don’t know who he is) talking about initiating social change. Her illustrations tell the story much better than I can so I’m just going to add a little of my perspective to her observations.

Franke is Canadian so maybe things are different across the lake but I doubt it.  Simply put, Gladwell argues that awareness is not enough to change behavior and Franke notes that sometimes a threat or pain point must be reached.

I’ve been noticing a lot more Euro-versions of cars appearing on the streets in Rochester- little tiny Hondas, Toyotas, Fords, etc. These cars are literally a fraction of the size of the SUVs they are hopefully replacing. So why are they appearing now? Could it be $4.25/gallon gas? Even a wealthy SUV driver might have issues with paying five bucks for gas to run out to the store or a movie…

A point I’ve belabored here is that change and response to  climate issues will only be driven by economics. Americans don’t want to believe it will affect us so our politicians won’t act. Awareness and acceptance of the issue is there but there isn’t any urgency- until we get hit in our wallets, painfully.

I live in a neighborhood of large, turn of the century (1900 not 2000) homes, most converted into apartments. From my kitchen window I can see down the backyards of my neighbors and each has its own large garage at the rear of their yards. There is a two story brick garage with a green tile roof, a stucco garage with diamond-paned leaded glass windows and a 1.5 story, three car garage with a loft. Not carriage houses exactly but very nice small buildings. In practically any other country these would be desireable buildings to live in. Here they are occupied by cars.

Yesterday I leased a new car in spite of my earlier stated plan to avoid doing so. I’m on a tighter budget these days and the nature of my last lease deal made it a financial no-brainer to just get another car and continue my plan. I drove an Accord (bigger, more boring and less mileage than my 2005 Accord), a Fit (cool little van-like Euro-Honda, 25/35 MPG) and a Civic which I liked best and which, surprisingly, got the best mileage (25/36).

The nature of leasing is that the estimated value of the car at the end of the lease or the ‘residual’ value determines how good a deal you get. The Civic had the best residual, cost about the same, after haggling, as the Fit and was the nicest to drive between the two more efficient cars. The Fit was underpowered but had tons of space. I liked the Civic’s car-ness better.

I’ve never been less excited about buying a new car. Nothing against the cars but it was a choice made for purely financial reasons. I would have just as soon kept driving the Accord but it would have cost me too much in the short term to do so. These are the choices I have to make these days.

So I’m driving the new car home from the dealer which is out there in one of those automall strips you find all over the country. About 1pm on a Monday. Traffic is bumper to bumper and I can’t see a single vehicle with more than one occupant. Our dependence on oil couldn’t be more pronounced. One person per car and each car gets its own nice house. That’s America for you.

And I was alone in my car too. No nice house, just a parking space…