The Dispatch
Going numb, gallon by gallon
Friday, May 2, 2008
BY TIM DOULIN
Pressing a computer button, Basem Hamdan changes the price of gas.
He dropped it 6 cents for a gallon of regular, to $3.59, on the digital sign yesterday morning at the Marathon Express he manages at Parsons Avenue and Williams Road on the South Side.
“Just to match the street price,” Hamdan says.
He monitors the prices at the Speedway about a mile and a half away on S. High Street and at other nearby stations. If they drop their prices, so does Hamdan. If they raise them, he matches them.
Cool! Does this mean we’re moving past step 1 in our 12 step oil addicition program?
As gas goes up, driving goes down
March figures show steepest decline in driving since 1942
(CNN) — At a time when gas prices are at an all-time high, Americans have curtailed their driving at a historic rate.
The Department of Transportation said figures from March show the steepest decrease in driving ever recorded.
Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less — that’s 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.” Records have been kept since 1942.
According to AAA, for the first time since 2002, Americans said they were planning to drive less over the Memorial Day weekend than they did the year before.
Tracy and Adam Crews posted on iReport that their annual Memorial Day weekend has traditionally involved camping and fishing.
“Well, due to the continual rise in gas, we felt our only recourse was to nix the idea this year and stay home” in Jacksonville, Florida, they wrote.
Instead, the couple said they “decided to camp out in the backyard. We set the tent up, just finished installing our above ground pool, and cleaned up the grill. … We have ourselves a campsite! It’s been a blast!”
Nakeisha Easterwood of Smyrna, Georgia, said with gas prices on the rise, she sometimes catches rides with friends, and doesn’t drive into town more than once a day. “It’s crazy,” she said.
According to AAA, the national average price for a gallon of regular gas rose to a record $3.936. That compares with an average price per gallon of $3.23 last Memorial Day.
“With it being near $4 a gallon, you definitely have to drive slower and pick and choose when you’re going to do it,” said Steve Kahn of Roswell, Georgia, at a Memorial Day festival in Atlanta.
Some Americans have turned to public transportation. Ridership increased by 2.1 percent in 2007, in part because of rising gas prices, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation in 2007, the highest level in 50 years, the group said.
The Energy Information Administration says gas consumption for the first three months of 2008 is estimated to be down about 0.6 percent from the same time period in 2007.
For the summer season, gas consumption is expected to be down 0.4 percent from last year.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/26/gas.driving/index.html
Ohio drivers cut miles, pollution
Monday, July 21, 2008 2:58 AM
By Spencer Hunt and Morgan Day
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
High prices at the pump are taking cars off the road and reducing air pollution.
The Federal Highway Administration estimates that vehicle travel decreased by 16 billion miles during the first three months of the year compared with the same period in 2007.
In Ohio, drivers cut 134 million miles.
“Every gallon of fuel that we avoid buying reduces emissions into our environment, so there are local and regional air-quality benefits,” said Sam Spofforth, executive director of Clean Fuels Ohio.
The decrease in travel nationwide is equivalent to removing 1.3 million cars from the road for a year and 7.1 million tons of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the air.
That’s about the same amount of carbon dioxide a large coal-fired power plant spews into the air every year.
As more people become fed up with paying $4 a gallon at the pump, they are turning to smaller cars and other alternatives:
• About 18 million bicycles have been sold annually in the United States over the past few years, accounting for about $6 billion in sales, said Fred Clements, executive director of the National Bicycle Dealers Association in Costa Mesa, Calif.
• Nationwide, first-quarter scooter sales were up 24 percent this year, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council.
• Minivan sales fell 20 percent in the first five months of this year. Large pickup truck sales fell 21 percent, and large SUVs were down 32 percent.
Brent Eberhard bikes to his job at the Ohio Historical Society.
“What I’m doing is just saving a few pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, but that’s something. … At least that’s something,” he said.
Perry Lindstrom, a greenhouse-gas expert at the Energy Information Administration, said the average driver emits 29.2 pounds of carbon dioxide a day.
“Realistically, you have a huge fleet of (people), and they’re not going to go away overnight,” he said. “Eventually, people change their behaviors.”
Lynn Robinson, manager of the RideSolutions Program through the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, said the agency’s vanpooling service, which serves 11 counties, has helped remove 120 cars from the roads in the past year.
That’s up from 45 the year before.
Carpooling through the RideSolutions Program took nearly 400 vehicles off the roads last month.
“With gas prices, people are starting to limit the amount of fuel that they’re using,” Robinson said, “and it’s a good way to clean the air.”
shunt@dispatch.com
mday@dispatch.com
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/07/21/gas_effects.ART_ART_07-21-08_A1_QOAQ7VK.html?sid=101