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DEL.ICIO.US11 billion - with a B - miles less in March?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wow! As my dad would say, “Who’d a thunk it?”
WASHINGTON — Americans drove less in March 2008, continuing a trend that began last November, according to estimates released today from the Federal Highway Administration.
The FHWA’s “Traffic Volume Trends” report, produced monthly since 1942, shows that estimated vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on all U.S. public roads for March 2008 fell 4.3 percent as compared with March 2007 travel. This is the first time estimated March travel on public roads fell since 1979. At 11 billion miles less in March 2008 than in the previous March, this is the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.
Though February 2008 showed a modest 1 billion mile increase over February 2007, cumulative VMT has fallen by 17.3 billion miles since November 2006. Total VMT in the United States for 2006, the most recent year for which such data are available, topped 3 trillion miles.
Additionally, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimated that greenhouse gas emissions fell by an estimated 9 million metric tons for the first quarter of 2008.
Comments
By Mel
May 24, 2008 8:08 AM | Link to this
And yet gas is at $4 a gallon…will this FINALLY start making sense to people now? It’s not about U.S. policy. The rest of the world (read China, India) are using gas at record rates and will continue to do so. The oil speculators know this and gas will keep going up.
Yes, it’s good to conserve (it at least saves your own pocketbook), but driving less won’t impact the oil markets very much…we’re just one of many factors playing a part. If you want to blame the government, blame the shortsightedness of the last 25 years in coming up with alternatives (another discussion…but biofuels may not be the best answer). But it’s foolish to blame them for the prices.
By Taxpayer
May 24, 2008 8:32 AM | Link to this
Unfortunately, the issue with oil (gas) consumption may best be resolved by a sustained high price even with a drop in our usage here. If our gas prices were to drop, what would be our response? Use more. Let the memory of high prices fade until they rise again. I wonder what would happen today if supplies were such that people were rationed fuel. We need independence from that scenario. Otherwise, things could get just plain mean and nasty. There are already people out there siphoning gas from people’s tanks and gas is below $4/gal. Think about it. Some of the possible outcomes are not very pretty.
By Cant stop lovin' U
May 24, 2008 8:35 AM | Link to this
I hate my 4runner. 16 mpg. costs 12 bucks per day to get to work. Insurance is 2 dollars per day. car payments are 16 dollars per day. what’s the point? 30 bucks a day just to drive a POS. and it’s all against my will. nobody asked me if i wanted an internal combustion engine. I dont. Why cant we all ride bikes and use the roads for bikes? Even little electric bikes for the hills and stuff. Rain? then drive, but ride bikes when it’s nice, and so what if you get wet once in a while? We’d save a fortune.
But you cant ride a bike on the streets without getting run over by traffic. People dont pay attention and you’d be roadkill on toast soon enough. Being broke is bad enough; being dead or crippled is a nightmare, pal.
When I was in my twenties, i sold my car and walked to work for two years and had no automotive costs whatsoever. I was still broke all the time, as I simply spent the money on army men and electric football game accessesories. I guess I’ll always be a broke schmoe, no matter what.
Carpooling is the real answer. Bikepooling is the better answer. A bicycle built for two is the transport solution for the ages.
By Taxpayer
May 24, 2008 8:59 AM | Link to this
I think everyone should get online and discuss the problem until it’s solved. By the way, this one’s tricky. If you are online on a truly mobile device, then the problem is not solved. If staying online requires staying put, then the problem is solved — until you get hungry, etc. Actually, the one thing that bothers me the most is lawn maintenance. If I cannot afford gas to cut my lawn and electric or manual mowers won’t do the job, then I will have to let it grow (snakes, etc.), convert to a reduced grass form (costs money for trees, bushes, mulch, etc.), buy a goat or other grass-eating animal (many pros and cons), or make ethanol from the grass and use it to fuel an ethanol-powered mower (numerous connotations here including throwing a beer party/lawn mowing party).
By Edward
May 24, 2008 9:30 AM | Link to this
It is time to walk away for Hillary and give the party a chance to be competitive. She has the lowest poupularity rating in the entire US
By Cant stop lovin' U
May 24, 2008 10:09 AM | Link to this
I really have a problem with internal combustion. The whole concept is all wrong. To harness the power of gasoline, you need all these engine parts and transmissions and axles and all of that wastes power.
If we, as human beings and intellectual supernovas, were not, in reality, only two guys to the right of the third guy from the left on the evolutionary chart, then we would have developed cars differently. The whole design is wrong. They’re too high, too heavy, and the idea that a central power source should be geared for all four wheels is the most wasteful of all.
A car should have four electric motors directly powering four wheels. There should be no gears. One Small electric motor is all that’s needed to do the work for one wheel. The cars should be low, and wide. Basically the design should be an airbag on wheels.
Cars should weigh no more than 1000 pounds, and they should all be identical. The contours of a car should be to maximize solar absortion of energy.
Imagine 100 years of electric car development. Imagine how cheap transportation could be.
What went wrong? “There will be blood.” That’s what went wrong. The electric car had been well on it’s way with a strong start when Ford started his Model T and trumped all. Somehow all the proponents of electric cars were bought off, killed, or electrocuted in freak fatal blimp accidents. Terrible year, not a goodyear at all. Besides all of that, americans demanded POWER. They loved going fast and they loved acceleration. Ford gave it to them. There’s something wrong with us. We traded transportation utopia for oval race tracks and the whispered, “zoom zoom” of a child in a car commercial. Of course, the movie “rebel without a cause” would’ve blown without the drag race scene off the edge of the cliff so I guess we’re even.
I demand an investigation about who killed the electric car at the turn of the century before world war one.
Maybe that’s what world war one was all about. The archduke ferdinand had invented an electric car.
By Taxpayer
May 24, 2008 2:47 PM | Link to this
The electric car “died” originally because of a lack of battery technology. At least there are people working on batteries and fuel cells now. There’s still plenty of bugs left to work out though.
By Gerald
May 24, 2008 8:10 PM | Link to this
Marxism
By rascal
May 25, 2008 8:34 AM | Link to this
Guarantee US Oil Producers a pump price of $2.50 per gallon for oil from US wells. Then get the shackles off them from the idiotic environmentalist and watch how quickly our dependency on foreign oil ends. Our problem is easily solved, it comes down to bad policy and an environmental movement hell bent on ending America’s capitalistic society.
By demwit
May 27, 2008 2:10 PM | Link to this
What!? Higher prices equals lower demand?? But additional supplies will not lower gas prices!!??
No…. Or as my dad would say, Wake the f******* up dumass!!