Longtime readers know that I'm skeptical that the rising price of gas will have much of an impact on the amount of driving most Americans do. The short version of my argument is that far too many of us have constructed lives based around driving - between home, work, the shopping mall, school, church, etc - for us to easily change. I'm beginning to have second thoughts, however, and Atrios' insight here is a perfect illustration of why:
During my peak driving life (from age 16-30 or so) the price of gas was basically not much more than a dollar per gallon for most of the time. Even in my relatively poor years, except for very long trips it was never a high enough price that I'd factor it in when considering to make a car trip. Sure I might grumble when it was time to fill the tank, but I never thought in terms of "how much will it cost me to make this trip."
At $4.50 per gallon in many places I guess that changes. If you're getting 20 mpg, a 50 mile round trip commute will cost you $11.25. The 13.2 mile trip from downtown Minneapolis to the airport, which you can do on the train for $1.50, costs 3 bucks by car.The point I'm trying to make is that when gas was cheap, people thought in terms of the cost of filling the tank rather than the cost of making a trip. People didn't really make a marginal cost/benefit calculation because they didn't really perceive the cost for short trips. That's changing.
Duncan and I are the same age, and like him I did an enormous amount of driving from age 16 to 30. And he's right. Gas was so cheap that I didn't think much about it. When it went up I barely noticed, and when it went down it just meant I had more money to spend when I got to whatever was at the end of my road.
But in the last 2 years the price of gas has risen so quickly that my entire mindset has changed. Somewhere around the $3.50 mark I started thinking in terms of cost per trip, and not cost per tank, a shift that has made me question what I'm doing every time I get inside my car. And that's paradigm shift I hadn't considered when making my previous argument about the stickiness of our past decisions. I was thinking using old rules, unable to see how a new reality might force me to develop new perceptions.
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