BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Naive me, I fell for the tagline "gas prices reaching near record highs - it has people putting down their keys to save money". Sounds like it could be a story about how to get around without driving - right?

Of course not! Just people bitching about gas prices - how could I be so stupid? Some choice quotes:

"During my days off, I don't go anywhere - I just stay in the house."

"It affects your life and you have no control over it."

"Holy crap, seriously? I mean, it's insane."

Not one mention of a bike, or even taking a bus.

Then they follow it up with a story about the girl who crashed her car on I-79 and killed two of her friends.

Holy crap, seriously? I mean, it's insane... indeed.

Frank Zappa said it best.

The Associated Press knows what's up.

Caption under the image reads: "A carefree bicyclist passes a 76 station, not even glancing at gas prices above $4 a gallon, Monday in Los Angeles."

I saw the same news report. Really pathetic.

I have repeatedly tweeted at Jim lokay from channel 2 to do a story to include bicycling, bussing, walking, and no response, and I have seen the same old crap Todd mentioned above.

Edit: he actually responded to me saying that he Is one of the few reporters who has done a story on alt transportation. I watch channel 2 nearly every day (for some reason). Must have missed it....?

Alt've transportation means he goes to the PAT Board meetings.

If it wasn't for all these alarmist news stories, I wouldn't have any idea what gas prices are. I rarely even bother looking anymore. Last time I purchased gas was in December, during a carpool trip to Rays--for someone else's car.

Never mind bikes, buses and alternative transportation, I have yet to hear one mainstream media outlet point out to the whining public that gasoline is still cheap compared to the Consumer Price Index and median income.

Never the less, the game is still rigged so that all the wrong people will still be making all the money, and the general public will still be feeling the pain. It will remain to be seen if there is enough pain to cause people to change how they live in the long term.

I also would have no idea what gas prices were if it weren't for other people in my life pointing them out. I love not having a car.

If gas is unaffordable and the only idea one can come up with to combat that is "stay home", I say YES DO THAT PLEASE. Perhaps if enough people are unimaginateive like that, traffic will get more sane (are more imaginative people more likely to obey traffic laws?)

It's stories like this that make me think Cranberry is a future ghost town - there's no way, with no affordable housing up there, that they can all live way out there and have their drive-through starbucks too. Janitors, baristas, waitresses, none of them can afford the "low income housing" options of a 300k house up there, and pretty soon they won't be able to afford the drive in from the actually affordable housing. Rich people don't have enough teenage kids to service the entire community, and certainly not during the school year.

But maybe that's just wishful thinking. Part of me is cheering gas to get to $20/gallon to motivate some of the necessary changes. Part of me is dreading it for all the hapless victims of such a price increase.

The major mission of contemporary TV is to sell SUVs. Would mentioning buses and bicycles help that mission?

Disclaimer added after I finished: I haven't seen/read the story. I'm going on past stories that I have seen and am in the mood for a rant. It is also not directed at anything anyone has said here. I'm generally for the price of gas being reflective of its real cost ... no gov't subsidies, taking into account environmental and health damage, etc...

--start rant--

You know what gets right up my nose about these stories? The fact that they never seem to talk about the people that are hurt by gas prices who HAVE to use gas for what ever reason.

For example farmers... or really just people living in rural areas in general.

Whether it's my 76 year old mom who lives 5 miles from the nearest shopping area, or my cousin whose has to top off his tractor so he go out an take care of his fields. Or my Aunt and Uncle who live out beyond the grid and use a combination of solar and gas generators (when the sun isn't out) for electricity & running water.

[Yeah, yeah they all chose to live that lifestyle... but we need farmers and farmers need to have an economic infrastructure around them... not everyone can live in the city.]

No, instead its a bunch of whiny urban and suburbanites who have perfectly functional public or alternative transportation as an option.

You freakin' stay at home when gas prices are high? WTF? Are (as my Mom would say) your legs broke? Walk, cycle, or take the freakin' Bus/T. Heck, even if your legs ARE broke the bus and T are handicap accessible. [Well, reasonably so.]

There is soooo much cool stuff in PGH, and you're going to miss it because of gas prices?

Really, seriously, WTF?

---end rant---

Phew...that's a little better.

^

Nice rant!!!

Myddrin, in spite of not having seen the story, you pretty much nailed it in the rant.

ej, the only problem with really expensive oil is that it will make really horrible extraction methods and other crappy alternatives more feasible and likely, before it will make sustainable energy production happen. American will burn their own furniture before they will make one less trip to the Starbucks, or turn off a light bulb.

edmonds - that's why I was hoping $20/gal would do it. If it's out of reach for even upper middle average Joe, then things will change. Hovering down in this "almost affordable but damn imposing" price range they can still sell enough to keep status quoa.

And myddrin's rant is why I feel bad about that, because I know those people will hurt the most, and sooner than anybody else, thus for longer than anybody else.

Because we have to have drive thru starbucks. Seriously? Half-caf-iced-mocha-cinna-latte-frappe-beverage-o is so urgent we can't park and go inside? (Drive thru anything but library book drop off irks me, and that'd probably irk me if I thought too hard about it, but it's hard to hate on libraries).

Can I complain because I'm subsidizing crap I seldom use? I don't care if the price of goods goes up or whatever, I'd rather pay the costs than pay them through my taxes so somebody can drive five miles to work.

Prices don't have to go up that much if we are getting goods from local farms.

Yeah, especially those local farms that deliver their goods via horse-drawn carriage.

Alas! When gas goes up to $20 the entire economy will collapse. This will probably hurt even the most innocent of renewable energy bystanders.

As I've been railing about for years, if we could get the area households which, since 1980, have added >= 1 net car, to instead purchase an annual bus pass subscription, public transit would not only be making ends meet, but probably growing instead of shrinking. That, and they'd be saving themselves $5,000 a year.

Another way of saying this is: Your driving your 2nd and 3rd cars every day is what caused me to wait 45 minutes this afternoon for either of two buses to show up.

@ALMKLM: you mean the Amish, right?

I think more people are going to ride bikes & grow Victory Gardens.

Less idiot cagers on the road = good. Suits me just fine. That they are shutting themselves in because they don't understand that they have transportation options = bad.... however, even if they did, you can lead a horse to water, but ya can't make 'em drink.

@pseudacris - Yes! The Amish, Mennonites and Luddites among us!

Natural Resources Defense Council has a sweet blog post about the cheapest, easiest and fastest ways to reduce consumption of oil.

Nice graphic too.

@ sloaps

The article mentions, in passing, at the end, the problem:

The real question is whether we have the political will.

And the goal itself shows that no, no we do not. The goal is to "reduce importation." We need to reduce (or slow the growth) of consumption.

Yeah, especially those local farms that deliver their goods via horse-drawn carriage.

So shipping cheese from California costs the same as shipping cheese from Pennsylvania?

I'm not sure why, but for some reason this topic reminds me of how screwed up in mainstream economics the whole concept of "growth" is. It seems like most economic theories rely completely on some percentage of constant growth, out into infinity. About a decade ago, there was even a big panic about the human population growth levelling off, the thought being that economic growth would level off correspondingly. I don't see how anyone with half a brain could understand where we live, on earth, continue consuming, and seriously believe that "growth" can continue indefinitely. Really, there is nowhere else to go.

@rsprake: do you really think Pennsylvania farmers that put their goods on a truck, and have to pay more per gallon of gas, aren't going to pass that cost along? EVERY business that uses gas is going to raise prices because their costs have gone up.

Will that PA cheese be marked up as a result less than that CA cheese, probably. But the PA cheese will still cost more than it had.

They absolutely will pass the cost along.

I said, Prices don't have to go up that much if we are getting goods from local farms not Prices WON'T go up.

On the topic of growth.

A friend shared this video with me yesterday.

Also, Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker wants to grow the Wisc economy to such a degree that everyone can affaord a car. That's something a child would say.

Natural Resources Defense Council has a sweet blog post about the cheapest, easiest and fastest ways to reduce consumption of oil.

Nice graphic too.

unfortunately, efficiency gains are associated with increases in consumption.

jevons paradox

new yorker: the efficiency dilemma

I call bullshit on "making 60 mpg the standard ... 1.5 Mbbl / day"

For the reason that HV stated above. Raising the efficiency standards only encourages more driving. I don't understand why "green advocacy" organizations keep pushing and pushing the higher CAFE standards. They must have smart people on staff who understand the perverse incentive, right? And I'm not arrogant enough to believe that we're just that much smarter than they are. So I have to conclude that they're playing some other cynical game, and I just can't figure out what it is.

but when all the small family farms go under because they cant afford to run their equipment anymore we will all be at the mercy of giant industrial farms.

the local farm thing is cool and all, but the entire food industry is not set up for that. The local food movement has made it possible to source many things, but it's not just walk into any supermarket or restaurant and pick up all your local food. There are a few notable stores (Whole Foods, EEFC) and restaurants that source locally, but many do not.

Many farms only sell direct to the consumer via CSA boxes of produce that you have to pick up once a week during the growing season or other direct sales on the farm. So a local farm 90 miles away may be a great food option that also clashes with the goal of getting rid of the car. Small, local farms just don't have the distribution network.

@edmonds59: You have gotten to to heart of the matter here as well as what is wrong with modern end-stage capitalism as we understand it. The earth is a rock of finite size. The non-renewable resources it contains therefore must also be of finite size. Modern economics and end-stage capitalism assume for the most part infinte growth. That growth is exponential. You cannot have infinite exponential growth in a closed finite system.

The math won't allow it. To claim otherwise is bascially a lie. This is the law of exponents that we all should have learned back in late elementary school or junior high. Exponents are a bitch sometimes. It's just more confortable to deny the truth and believe the lie.

Wir sind gefickt.

its also incredibly time and labor intensive for small farms to package fresh produce in small enough quantities for people or small stores to buy directly from them. for example, my dad and uncle had to give up pretty much all small (less than an entire flatbed or tractor trailer's worth) fresh fruit sales when my aunt died because they couldnt afford to hire someone to manage the sales, grade the fruit, and package it. that combined with the cost of running or renting a small storage facility made it a money losing proposition. instead they pick the apples directly into the big palette boxes and load them right on the truck in the orchard and just drive the truck out to take them to the packing plant and pull the other truck into the orchard to start filling. anything else requires more manpower than its worth. i don't know what they are going to do when gas prices go up to 8-10 dollars a gallon. most people don't realize that farmers themselves dont get to set the price for their produce, the packing companies do. so i am not at all confident that they will be able to pass the cost along and they sure as hell can't absorb it.

this is but one of the many reasons that independent family farms are dying at such a rapid rate all over the country. that sprawl all over cranberry, guess what it used to be...

Jeez. You guys all sound like the people who don't have the choice but to drive! We have choices to buy locally and to eat at restaurants to buy locally. We don't all have to shop at Giant Eagle.

Buy local and eat local comes with a premium. There are a lot of people who feed their kid's McDonalds because it's cheaper than buying and preparing good food.

Options to Giant Eagle? Whole Foods, CSA, Trader Joes - none of those are any cheaper. Buying fresh vegetables from farm markets, I get that, but a lot of people nowadays can't do much more than open a can and pour into a pan. Cooking fresh is a lost skill.

Buying fresh and buying local are luxuries.

@lyle -- I will guess they probably keep pushing these standards for two reasons.

1. You're dealing with an ideology here. Ideologies are never interested in the miracle of real life. They are interested only in the logic of their own idea. Therefore they start from a premise and proceed with a logical consistency that doesn't exist in the real world. Worse, they tend to try to forcibly re-make the real world so it conforms to the logic of their idea.

Both you and cburch have immediately started to point out the practical real world problems this creates. Exactly so. And from the ideologue's viewpoint, entirely irrelevant. I think it is similar to the discussion that ensued a while regarding Piece's view on vegetarianism and animals for food. (I am not disputing Pierce's or any views on that subject here here - just pointing out what I think were unrecognized structural assumptions everyone was making.)

2. I think they are probably making a common mistake. One question that has to be asked in these energy efficiency/resource discussions is whether the number of units of energy reqired to produce the conservation result (input) are greater or smaller than the number of energy units saved by the process (outputs) If it isn't greater, then it's inefficient.

The perfect example of the currently is ethanol production from corn. The energy units going in are at best marginal from what I have seen. And this doesn't consider the lowered combustion energy output that apparently results from the additional of 10-15% ethanol to gas, or damage than can result to engines not adapted for it.

Without trying to research this, I think your intuitive perception encouraging more driving seems to be right - unintended consequences at their best. And as you said, bullshit. But as I noted in #1 above, to the extent that this ideologically driven, irrelevant to them.

I guess the better answer would be, "OK guys, instead of giving us some vague answer/standard, let's talk facts and you tell us exactly how you are going to there from here, how long it's going take you to get to it, and prove it really will be energy efficient when you consider it in terms of energy unit inputs and outputs." I bet the answers won't be very good for the most part.

@cburch and ALMKLM -- exactly so. You are 100% right. And they are among the many reasons I said, "Wir sind gefickt."

Colin, what you described regarding your family farm can be summarized in three words - collapsing profit margins. But I suspect the big agribusinesses won't fare much better in the long run - just long enough to put businesses like your family's under.

The problem they will have(as well as a lot of other large business entities that we have allowed to develop) is the supply chain. Anyone who studies military history knows what happens when armies depend upon long complex supply lines. They break down and the armies can't be supplied. Complexity theory teaches the same thing. The more complex the system, the more robust it has to be to function. Ours is not -- because it is a high energy system, and becuase it depends upon oil for that energy both to produce and deliver the food produced by it. It is vulnerable to non-availbility of that oil, both in supply and price.

@rsprake

Are they going to use local grain to feed the local dairy cows?

@cdavey

I don't even think I got into my views on vegetarianism... (I don't understand it) Animal consumption is incredibly inefficient BTW, but I never got into that because it's irrelevant to the moral issue I was trying to engage in

--

Let's just keep doing cycling advocacy. The easier it is to bike around here, the more people will do it, right?

cdavey - but only the idealogues are willing to come up with plans for a brighter future that enable people to continue living at the standard they are used to - a standard defined by personal automobile use as both necessary and good.

on the other hand we've got idealogues who are pushing 100% people powered transportation (laid on top of an infrastructure grid that won't hold it), or people pushing a combo of mass-transit / people powered transport (again, the current infrastructure is unacceptable). Whether they're closer to reality, not only are they pushing a widely determined 'negative' change ("you mean I can't have a car? f that!"), but it would also require massive changes to the infrastructure (supply chains, city layout, employer/employee locations, family locations, side-frigging-walks, bike lanes, train lines), which is expensive and requires politicians to have mass support or cahones.

So all sides are living in a fantasy world. I'm pretty darn convinced that the majority of society won't enact meaningful change until they're forced to, and then only in the manner that will cause them the least personal change possible. Thus the "increase efficiency" camp is very popular.

And the whole growth thing... You're missing the point. While there is growth, the people pushing it are making money and living comfortably. There's a lot of "get it while we can". There's not a lot of "what's good for the next seven generations". Because that's not fun, easy, or comfortable. We are a society of grasshoppers, and we're bringing on a winter like we've never seen. Not everybody will have the epiphany and turn into ants overnight.

@pierce - according to Fast Food Nation, most production beef is fed chicken shit. Not sure if it's out-of-state or local though.

@cburch - I think we hail from the same general area. I didn't grow up there (Mom did), but going to visit my family who has orchards has spoiled me on apples, cherries and blueberries forever.

@ALMKLM - lol, good point, except Pierce was talking about dairy cows. They are almost always fed grain. Don't want the milk to taste too shitty, you know. All cattle should be eating grass though anyway. Grain is for the birds.

Efficiency begets additional miles traveled to be sure, however, VMT establishment should buffer that. What is more interesting to me is the projected savings from mass transit and land use/management policies and ordinances.

just to clarify, we're not talking about just an increase in vehicle miles traveled as a result of greater fuel economy, but also an increase in fuel consumption.

It took me a while to find, but I think this illustrates HiddenVariable's point.

From 1986, I actually remember this strip running back then. The rest of the country was pay less than $1/gallon for the first time that I can remember.

My home town gas was still at 1.30+/gallon until our state assemblyman threatened to investigate. Prices literally dropped overnight.

(edited to remove extraneous apostrophe)

ALMKLM-"Buy local and eat local comes with a premium. There are a lot of people who feed their kid's McDonalds because it's cheaper than buying and preparing good food.

Options to Giant Eagle? Whole Foods, CSA, Trader Joes - none of those are any cheaper. Buying fresh vegetables from farm markets, I get that, but a lot of people nowadays can't do much more than open a can and pour into a pan. Cooking fresh is a lost skill.

Buying fresh and buying local are luxuries."

Don't forget the co-op or growing your own. If they can learn how to read and learn how to drive, they can very well learn how to cook!

When the bus routes were cut, I liked the article about the woman who said she could not afford a car to drive the 4 miles to work. And now her short bus ride would take about 1.5 hours with some walking and a transfer. Unless you are really slow, you should be able to walk at least 3 miles in an hour if you put your mind to it.

@Helen - agreed! The problem is most people are like the can't-make-it-4-miles-to-work woman.

I remember two years ago when the recession was first hitting, hearing stories about people keeping chickens, working gardens again, hanging laundry to dry. So its encouraging that there are some among us who have the stuff to make it work.

But we're preaching to the choir here I think. Most people here already have that "lets find a way" attitude. So many other people are content to throw up their hands at whatever obstacle lay in their path. We're never going to reach them. Four miles might as well be four-hundred.

Unless you are really slow, you should be able to walk at least 3 miles in an hour if you put your mind to it.

At 3 mph, a 4 mile trip to work means 2.7 hours every day walking. That's a lot of time and effort to ask of people, on top of holding a job. Of course a bike could help. Unless the route's unsafe, or all hills, or she's got medical issues. Without knowing more of the woman's situation, I don't think you can conclude that her problem is readily fixable with a change in attitude.

Likewise, growing your own food takes time. Income from a second job, or fresh carrots and corn? If you hope to pay your rent next month, you may not have a choice.

Some people have workable alternatives for such issues, but not everyone has the same easy options.

But she did say the bus trip would be about 3 hours a day- in the article, walking or biking were not a mentioned option. Or carpooling. Heck, a taxi may have been better than buying a car. Yes, she may have had a hard time walking the 4 miles. My guess is that it was never considered.

I believe someone mentioned the throw up their hands mindset often seen. I agree- there are often numerous alternatives that can help, but so often either they are unknown or just dismissed.

saw a commercial yesterday on wpxi for a news segment wherein they would be providing the secrets of where cops set up speed traps. included in the commercial was a line about letting you know where to slow down. that made me bury my head in my hands, and reminded me of this thread.

They have those stories a few times a year. Brilliant!

Don't the gas prices rise every summer? How does this compare to the last end of April?

Nothing like a sheltered billionaire to totally miss the point: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2011/0425/Donald-Trump-s-plan-to-lower-4-a-gallon-gas-prices

According to this site, gas was around $2.87 a year ago, $3.84 now. All time high was around June 2008, at $4.12. 2008 was the only year gas prices have been as high as now. Here's another site that adjusts for inflation and goes back a little farther (but it's just one guy's prices, nothing official), and another that goes back even farther.

Gas prices do tend to rise in the summer, but over the last decade, there's so much else going on in the data that it can hard to see that pattern.

HV, I suspect wpxi gets their information straight from the police department.

I had no idea those Christian scientists could be so snide. That's wonderful.

i guess the "free market" is all well and good unless you're talking about a bunch of arabs "laughing at us"?