San Antonio Express-News, 4-21-08

U.S. takes foot off the pedal


Patrick Driscoll
Express-News

Funny thing, fuel hauler Tony Gonzales hasn't noticed a slowdown in how much gasoline he gushes into underground tanks at area convenience stores.

But he does know that for him, as well as many others, the nation's century-long romance with cars and the open road has lost some luster.

American drivers, getting older and getting tired of paying high gas prices, drove less in 2007 than the year before, marking the first drop in 27 years, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

As people alter their lifestyles to deal with record-high gas prices — from work commutes to vacation travel — nagging questions persist for planners: How far will the changes go, and how will that bode for toll roads that survive on, literally, too much traffic?

For Gonzales, who for years has carpooled from Pleasanton to his job at Mission Petroleum Carriers in San Antonio, the doubling of gas prices since 2004 has slowed his get-up-and-go.

He recently sidelined one of his pickups, cut down weekly family outings to San Antonio to shop and eat, and doesn't drive as often to his 35-acre spread toward Poteet, where he wants to build a cabin.

"Gasoline's too high," he said. "We've got to save that money for other bills that we have."

Regular unleaded averaged $3.49 a gallon nationwide Sunday, up 63 cents from a year ago, according to AAA, and federal forecasters say it'll likely crest near $4 in a month or two. Local prices hovered around $3.35.

U.S. prices could average $3.60 a gallon in May and June, the Energy Information Administration predicts, blowing by the inflation-adjusted monthly record, in today's dollars, of $3.41, set in March 1981. The actual price then was $1.42.

"We're kind of moving into unknown territory here as far as fuel prices," said Kurt Forsgren of Standard & Poor's, who second-guesses traffic forecasts for U.S. toll projects and rates related bonds. "You probably have to go back to the '70s to figure out what happened during the fuel price spikes."

Those spikes put the brakes on driving in 1974, 1979 and 1980, the only other drops since World War II.

Long time coming

A cooling of driving fever may seem startling, but the deceleration has been creeping up for a long time, notes a 2006 study by transportation researcher Steven Polzin of the University of South Florida.

Steady rises in births, life expectancies, household incomes, car ownership, suburban sprawl and women entering the work force ushered in a car-happy society racking up road miles much faster than population growth, the report says.

But now work force shifts and cars per household are near saturation. Baby boomers are slipping past middle age, when people earn and drive the most. And gas prices are shooting into the stratosphere.

Increases in driving actually have been slowing since the 1950s, and they reversed for several years after the oil shocks in the 1970s and early 1980s. By the time gas prices got ugly again in 2005, driving per capita had started dropping.

So instead of travel soaring five times faster than population, as it did from 1977 to 2001, the report concluded mileage will now go up just two to three times faster through 2025.

"It's not trivial, but it's a moderate shift," Polzin said recently. "Today, I would be more conservative than that."

That's because gas prices continued to climb, and last year, though more drivers were likely on the roads, Americans as a whole drove less for the first time in almost three decades.

Motorists drove just over 3 trillion miles in 2007, down 12.2 billion or 0.4 percent, federal Traffic Volume Trends reports show.

U.S. mileage plunged 4 percent in December, compared with the year before and, preliminary numbers show, continued to sag 1.7 percent in January.

Texans also pulled back in December,

 

Roswell, in the future, I would appreciate it if you could keep articles like these in the same thread to cut down on using unnecessary space.

 

Will do. Sorry. Didn't think of that.