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Gas prices, US vs. Europe
The following is tangentially related to clearthinker's recent post about US energy policy.
One of his points was that at $4 a gallon, gas is still cheap in the US. In Europe, gas prices are currently $8-9 a gallon, and there are no riots. There are multiple reasons for this, some of which I'll briefly explore.
One reason is exchange rate. In late 1990s, one Euro was only worth about 80 US cents. Now it's worth $1.60. So the fact that a barrel of oil costs north of $110 is mitigated by the fact that 100 Euro now buys lots more dollars than it used to.
The other reason is that gas has always been relatively expensive in Europe. There has been no sharp rise in gas prices, and in fact over the last 10 years gas prices haven't changed much. This is in sharp contrast with the US where gas now costs several times as much as it used to in the late 1990s.
There are important differences in European and US transportation systems and policies. These stem largely from their histories, and now there are many interconnected factors.
European governments have for a long time taxed gasoline fairly heavily. This gave them the ability to cushion sharp oil price rises by adjusting the tax rate. Europeans are also much less dependent on cars than Americans, which is in part precisely because gas has never been cheap.
In the US, the arrival of the automobile in the early 20th century coincided with an era of great expansion. US cities are designed around cars. The streets are wide and multi-lane, parking spaces are large, the highways and freeways in large urban areas are plentiful, cities are sprawling, and a driver's license is the most common form of ID.
A somewhat unfortunate side effect of this is that it's actually difficult to get around without a car in many cities. One exception is NYC, which probably has the highest concentration of people without drivers' licenses in the US; many people don't own a car, and there is a good public transport system.
In Europe, the history has been radically different. By the time the automobile became a factor, there were already many multi-million cities. In early 20th century, there were already fairly well developed public transport systems in large European cities - trains, trams, buses. By the end of the 19th century, most of Europe also had a very good rail network.
Most European cities are not car-friendly. The streets are narrow, parking places are scarce and small, congestion is a major problem. On the other hand, public transport tends to be a good and relatively inexpensive alternative, and cities tend to be much denser, so the distances to travel are much smaller (the opposite of, say, Los Angeles).
The upshot is that to most Europeans, cars have much lower value because they're both less useful and have more drawbacks. The average European is much closer to a New Yorker than to a Los Angeleno when it comes to transportation (and perhaps in other respects as well...).
I have some personal, purely anecdotal evidence for this. I lived in a smallish (pop. about 100,000) city in Northern California for several years. Before I found a place to live, I needed a car. I can't very well imagine living without a car there. It was pretty much a necessity. Public transport was close to nonexistent, and the city was built flat and wide.
Now I live in Germany, in a small town (more like a village) not far from a largish city. I don't have a car, and don't particularly need it. I work for a small branch of a large software company; most of my coworkers get to work either on foot or by bike, including some who own cars but don't always use them. The rail network is very good. Many prefer trains to cars for business trips because trains tend to be faster and one can get some work done on a train.
This is not to say that Europeans are happy about rising gas prices, they're not. But it's much less of a factor simply because cars are much less of a factor. The US transportation policy (or lack thereof) has been rather short-sighted, though of course that is not something specifically American. Many Americans are now in a difficult situation because cars are getting more and more expensive to run, but no less necessary. It will be interesting to see how the situation will develop further. In the short term there will likely be a major push towards alternative fuels, but in the long term, better public transport is probably the only sensible alternative. Cars are simply way too inefficient and wasteful. So last century.
Comments (56)
This is a spot-on and great analysis of the current situation in Europe and a great overview of publican transportation.
However, the only bone I would have to pick with you -- and many others who point to increased public transportation as a solution to the gas woes in America -- is the fact that this solution doesn't work for the very same reason that it does in major cities. That is, for public transportation to be effective and worthwhile, it must cover a relatively small area such as a densely-populated urban center. That's why public transportation exists where it does. Only a handful of cities in the United States have a viable, reliable public transportation system, and this makes sense -- the larger the area the system must run on, the larger the system has to be and the lower per-capita usage. And urban population density is what makes a public transportation system not profitable, but at least near break-even. Very few if any public transportation systems are a profit to the cities they support.
I will offer my own anecdote living in Washington, DC. Metro, the public transportation system here, is perennially overbudget and has never turned a profit. It is spread out over roughly 20 square miles, with most of the coverage being inside Washington DC. There have been many attempts to extend this system into the far-outer boroughs and counties, but it always meets resistance because of 1) cost, and 2) effectiveness.
So while I grant that gas usage is a problem in the United States, as the situation stands, public transportation is simply not a viable option for anything but a large city. As you said yourself, most American cities that are not large urban centers are sprawled out, and much less densely populated. It is for this very reason that public transportation would be ineffective in those situations.
April 26, 2008 8:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
London is Europe's largest city, a big population with low urban density and massive urban sprawl.
The public transport is ineffective and hugely overpriced. Roads are congested, parking is scarce and expensive where available, gas is expensive. We're universally screwed. Go figure.
One thing to point out though is that the U.S. rail system is pretty underdeveloped. Aside from Metro North, LIRR and NJ Transit in the tri-state area, there is no local suburban rail network - just Amtrak. More suburban rail services around the U.S. would be a start, at least in changing the suburban car-oriented mindset.
April 26, 2008 8:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Europe's largest city is Moscow, not London. Not that it matters for this discussion.
As with so many other things, Britain is not very representative of Europe. For one thing, they drive on the wrong side of the of the road in London ;)
Indeed, London sprawls over an incredibly large area with relatively low population density for such a huge city. And yes, Britain has Europe's highest gas prices, with the possible exception of Norway. Car prices are also very high, in part because it's rather difficult to import cars from other countries (not because of administrative barriers, simply because driving a continental car in the UK is not so great).
The UK is odd in that such a large percentage of its population is concentrated in SE England in general and specifically London. Not all Brits are happy about this, as it creates all sorts of problems... transport being just one of them.
I also wonder about the rail network in Britain. That's not something I know much about, but I heard rumblings that the Thatcher era privatisation was not an improvement.
April 26, 2008 9:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Moscow is larger, you're right. And more expensive than London (a prestigious accolade!) Whether or not it's technically "Europe" is a different argument all together... it's on a different continent, has a different alphabet, and isn't in the EU. Plus it suited my argument to talk about London ;)
April 26, 2008 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
When I was a child in England in the 1950s, the national train system was a model for the world. Now, it's terrible. Sometimes a government can do a better job than can private enterprise at running things. Indeed, much of the time this obviously is the case, although silly ideological biases blind most Americans to this.
April 26, 2008 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
To some extent, many US urban areas are stuck in a vicious circle.
Many people won't use public transport because they have a car already. Because relatively few people use public transport, it is expensive and/or unprofitable. Because most people have cars, most new stores and entertainment venues are built on the edges of cities. Because so many stores and entertainment venues are far from the city centers, most people need cars.
I am guessing (based on no solid evidence whatsoever) that using cars will at some point simply become so expensive that public transport will be an economically viable alternative, and then real changes will come, even though the change won't be very rapid (decades, not years). It won't be easy. No matter how exactly it will turn out in the end, it will almost certainly be painful. Giving up oil is no easier than giving up smoking.
April 26, 2008 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is a possible side answer, for the central cities: Place a surcharge on monthly parking ramp contracts in downtown areas, and dedicate proceeds to subsidizing of public transport.
Monthly ramp contracts are for those who drive in to downtown every day, from wherever. They're expensive, so they are a luxury. If someone insists on creating congestion by driving in, let that person help run the transit for others who do it in a more responsible way.
April 26, 2008 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're quite right about population density being a necessary factor to make public transportation work.
Any sensible energy policy has to include proposals governing the very way we build our cities. In most areas of the US, land use is controlled almost strictly by private land developers. Surrounding wilderness or fertile agricultural lands are fundamentally undervalued in comparison to their worth as developed property, so there is no incentive to build within the existing city limits. The result: ever-expanding, low-density sprawl.
What's called for is the empowerment of land-use management practices. This is common not only in Europe (I also happen to live in a small town in Germany), but in the enlightened state of Oregon as well. In Oregon laws limit the conditions for development outside the city limits so that the cities remain compact enough to make public transportation feasible. Another positive side effect is that the city centers are able again to become diverse and vital.
New Urbanism is one representative of the movement seeking such changes in urban development in the US.
April 26, 2008 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is again an interesting implication of the different histories.
Many European cities are not that much larger than they were 100 years ago. Before the advent of cars, it was simply not feasible to build sprawling cities. Getting from one place to another would have been prohibitive. As a result, cities were built tall rather than wide, with very high population density. Think Manhattan. Also because most of Europe is so much more densely populated than the US, land is relatively expensive, which is another factor against urban sprawl (which is not to say sprawl doesn't exist here).
As you point out, land is cheap in the US (there's just so much more of it), which means the cheapest and most likely way of expanding cities is sprawl. Again, cars and cheap gas play a major role, because without them it would make no sense to build new malls or cinemas so far from city centers. Manhattan and San Francisco are interesting because they're so atypical. Being an island/peninsula, sprawl is not an option (not directly at least), which in both cases led to high population density and sky high property values.
Where in Germany are you BTW? I'm near Stuttgart, which - ironically - is pretty much the home of the automobile, and auto industry is very strong around here. For those who don't know, Mercedes Benz (nowadays Daimler) and Porsche are both located in Stuttgart.
April 26, 2008 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, me too!
I'm south of Stuttgart close to Tübingen.
I'm hesitant to post an e-mail address here, but if you're on facebook, we could exchange contact info there. Here's my profile: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=534719921
April 26, 2008 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Either I'm doing something wrong, or it doesn't work. Maybe you'll have better luck with my profile:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1231705951
Failing that, what the heck... you can try michaln at scitechsoft dot com, that is an old address which is so spammed that a bit more won't make a difference :)
April 26, 2008 6:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Japan is quite similar. The Japanese railroad/subway system is extremely extensive and crisscrosses all over the Japanese Islands. A map of the Tokyo subway system literally looks like a convoluted spider-web. Gas is also extremely expensive in Japan, around $5.60/gallon in Tokyo. So the gas prices are prohibitive to owning cars.
In addition there is a yearly tax paid on automobiles that scales up depending on the efficiency and exhaust production of the model. So people are encouraged to buy smaller, fuel efficient, cleaner-running automobiles. Supposedly cars that exceed 10 years in age see further tax increases, although I am not sure of that.
And in addition to the car tax, there are also relatively high highway tolls in Japan, costing about $40 dollars for a 3 hour trip between Osaka and Nagoya, its simply not an affordable way to travel.
This is why rail has become the most widely used form of transportation in Japan. In addition bicycle use is extremely extensive, with each household having at least one bike per person. Of course, this leads to other problems such as the huge amount of bicycle abandonment and disposal issues, but I think almost everybody in Japan uses a bicycle in their daily lives, whether they be young or old, male or female. I often see 20-something females with short skirts and high heels riding their bicycles to work -- which I consider to be a nice bonus to eco-friendly transportation. hehe.
April 26, 2008 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh yeah, just to add further contrast. A typical daily-use city bicycle costs about $60-70 in Japan. An unlimited use New York city subway Metro-card now costs a whopping $81(!!!).
April 26, 2008 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
And they have health care. The economy is sturdy. Healthcare plus public infrastructure is a real economic base for this century.
April 26, 2008 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Codegen,
Yes! Very good points.
The need for public transportation in the South-western CT area is tremendous: the Highway and Parkway are consistently jammed in awful traffic during peak hours.
The train lines exist (even though necessary expansions have not been made since, who knows? and there are no plans for it in the making...) But they are not easy to use because:
- Getting a parking permit on the Station's lot is wait-listed; this is a wait of years, as in waiting 7 years, for example.
- The train schedules are scanty and don't always allow for people to get to their jobs on time!! Specially as you move away from the wealthier areas with many NYC commuters.
You only have to see the traffic to see the need for it, but the Governor would rather encourage us to "carpool" than invest in a serious public transportation system.
April 26, 2008 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Riffing on Kinkistyle's comments...
Because of relatively high gas prices, fuel efficiency of cars has been a major concern in Europe for decades now (at least since the 1970s oil crises). Fuel consumption is one of the most important attributes of a car (right next to price). In the US, it is often quite hard to find out what a car's fuel consumption actually is; in Europe, it's typically at the top of the list of a car's technical details. This is also reflected in the motoring press.
As a result, European cars tend to be smaller and diesel engines are quite popular (since mid-1990s when good turbo diesel engines became widely available). This is not a result of some sort of fuel efficiency requirements imposed by governments, it is simply a consequence of the economic impact of high gas prices. There has been a push towards cleaner cars mandated by governments, but that is only indirectly related to fuel consumption.
The engines in European and Japanese cars tend to be far more high-tech than US car engines. American cars often have large engines using relatively old technology, with lots of power but also low efficiency.
A side effect of this is that SUVs are not nearly as popular in Europe as they are in the US, and US-style trucks are nearly nonexistent here. Aside from high operating costs, it is also hard to park these vehicles, as parking spots tend to be much smaller in Europe.
All that is probably pretty similar to Japan.
April 26, 2008 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
"American cars often have large engines using relatively old technology, with lots of power but also low efficiency."
One also wonders about the purpose of driving a powerful car in the US, where the speed limit is 55mph most often!
April 26, 2008 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am currently in Dublin, Ireland, and I must say this is an excellent analysis. Cars here are more of a liability than anything else, and it is almost always slower to drive than walk, bicycle or take the bus at any time during the day.
Drivers here complain about gas (or "petrol" as they prefer) prices, but much more in the abstract way I did a few years ago in the US - it was annoying when I had to fill up the tank, but it was not a widespread problem. The prices were bearable and would not significantly affect either my wallet or the amount I drove.
April 26, 2008 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
The rail networks are another interesting point. In the second half of the 19th century, European countries started building extensive railroad systems. It was by far the fastest mode of travel, as well as an inexpensive way to transport large quantities of goods (rail also had significant military implications).
By the time cars became a factor (roughly after World War I), most countries already had almost the same railroad networks they have today. Rail transport remained very important. That's not to say there haven't been any problems, but European railways never deteriorated to the same extent the US ones did. High gas prices no doubt had a lot to do with that. Trains have always been used by many people to commute.
Nowadays rail travel is becoming more popular again, especially for medium-distance travel (several hundred miles), after high-speed trains have been introduced. Because train stations are typically situated near city centers, and because there are minimal delays when getting on/off trains, trains can be faster than air travel. Not to mention more comfortable, because there is just so much more room.
I'm not so familiar with the history of US railways. I know that rail was tremendously important in late 19th century, but nowadays Amtrak is practically a swearword. I don't know when and how this changed, although I can guess why - trains can't compete with airplanes for coast to coast travel, and trucks are used for transporting goods thanks to cheap diesel.
April 26, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Having lived in Germany I agree with this post. Most often one takes the Strassenbahn downtown.
Gas prices were and are much higher than in the US. These prices were easily factored into life --especially with the public transportation.
Add the German healthcare system to this public transportation system and you see that America is and will be behind economically for the next century.
Too late to buy euros now.
April 26, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm a non-car owning, but driver's license carrying New Yorker. I'm not from here. Had a car form age 15 until I moved here 9 years later.
I appreciate public tranportation. All the walking has been good for my body and the subway rides have been good times for me to read.
But cars are not "so last century." When I go nout of town and rent a car I do love it.
Driving is cool.
April 26, 2008 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. Sometimes driving is necessary, which is why I will shell out the $40 bucks twice a month to rent a Zipcar to drive to visit my grandma and haul stuff back from the Costco. Its refreshing to get out of the city, but once I hit the LIE near Manhattan, the stress from road-rage and traffic cancels out any relaxation I get from cruising around the 'burbs. Plus, owning a car in NYC is a monumental hassle.
Just to give perspective: NY'ers pay almost $500 a month just on a parking space in Manhattan. We are talking like a 4 ft by 10 ft. space here people, not a garage or anything. Can you imagine? Some people pay that much for their apartments in other cities.
April 26, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
With a free space to park a car, no less!
My rent in Northern Cali was a bit more than $500, but not much more. The apartment was definitely larger than 4 by 10 ft., and I did have my own parking space.
April 26, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
And without a parking garage, you have to face that crazy alternate street parking system. The cars in NYC are driven in by people from the suburbs.
April 26, 2008 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't get me wrong, I like cars. Just because I don't have to have a car now doesn't mean I won't get one anyway :)
I never lived in NYC but I know a few New Yawkers and I visited a few times (you know where I took the pic in my avatar I'm sure). And it was always the same story, basically owning a car in NYC, especially Manhattan, is more trouble than it's worth. Too much hassle, too high costs.
By "cars are so last century" I simply meant that the golden age of motoring is over, and it ain't coming back. Congestion is getting worse, gas is getting more expensive, and I don't see how it will get better in the foreseeable future.
April 26, 2008 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post and great comments. I often wonder about the scale of the US, and how to break it down administratively into more manageable units for things like public transportation, school districts etc.
I don't have any answers, but I do feel that transportation, education, development areas, voting districts etc. ALL have to be addressed as a whole to come up with better solution, rather than just tweaking one facet. Harder to do, but I feel it would be more successful in the long run.
April 26, 2008 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I grew up Toronto (which also has a dense, vibrant, walkable downtown well-served by public transit) and lived in Manhattan for several years, as well. Although I had a driver's license from age 16, I never owned a car, or wanted one, until the minute I moved to Los Angeles last year.
I wonder just how high gas prices would have to be to encourage the massive cultural and infrastructure shift that would get Angelenos like me to use public transit. (I love driving my Prius.) I don't think gas prices of $8-9 per gallon would do it (although they would make poor people's lives miserable) -- in Southern California, people have to drive, whether they want to or not. If someone lives out in the boonies because that's where they can afford a home, and there isn't enough dense housing close to their workplace, they're going to have to drive no matter how much gas costs. Presumably, gas prices of $10+ per gallon would get people to prioritize fuel efficiency in buying new cars, and would cause house prices to drop in the outer burbs. But given how decentralized LA is, there is no one central core where most of the businesses are. LA's urban plan is for multiple centres, some of them 40 miles apart. There is a skeletal metro, but the nearest stop is more than a mile from my house (in a gentrified, upper-middle-class neighborhood), and the routes don't go anywhere I ever need to go. Because most people have cars, it's mostly the poorest people who take buses. (Sitting in LA traffic has to be ten times worse sitting on a bus than in your car.) And biking to work is not so inviting in the smog, in a city where there are few bike lanes, and drivers don't respect them so that you feel unsafe on the road. I bike in the mountains, but biking to work feels too dangerous.
European-style bike lanes, separated from traffic by a curb, would help a lot, and presumably there's space to install them and it wouldn't be that expensive. But still, if I biked to work, and needed to go out in some other neighborhood afterward, how would I then ride 20 miles home in the middle of the night? I could, but I wouldn't want to, and many people just can't. Walking or bike-commuting works well in centralized cities like NYC, Toronto, Amsterdam or Berlin. Not so much in cities like LA, that were designed to be dispersed.
A subway that goes (almost) everywhere, like the NYC or London systems, would be a great step toward fixing the problems created by car-centred urban planning. But that'd be a huge investment (presumably made even more expensive by the need to earthquake-proof the system). Would the state or federal govts be willing to subsidize LA this way?
High gas prices just won't be enough, by themselves, to establish the needed political will in a city that's designed for cars. I wonder what it would take ...
April 26, 2008 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Toronto. Now that is one beautiful city. If I could weasel myself Canadian citizenship, that's where I'd go.
Except for Portland, life here in Oregon depends upon cars. Not only can you not get places without a car, significant parts of the economy (as in many places throughout the US) are built around cars --especially among poorer people. Take your average working class kid out of high school-- buys a pick up or a high performance car. Gas guzzlers. Take your average working class person, can't afford a new car that gets good gas mileage. These people are now paying over a hundred dollars a week to just exist. They are not paying their credit cards, their mortgages or going to the dentist. For these people, we are very near a depression.
Even the growing number of Prius owners can't offset the economic upheaval that so many communities face as they can't afford to drive, lose their car-related jobs, or lose the jobs in a general economy in which people drive less and have less money.
The answer to your question about what it will take? in my opinion it will take economic hardship everywhere, the kind of disasters experienced in Ohio and Pa. as NAFTA decimated union jobs.
It's going to get a lot worse. Then it's a matter of rebuilding from the ashes, as it were.
April 26, 2008 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Heh, it's not every day that someone describes Toronto as "beautiful". Livable, clean, green, multicultural, integrated, and did I mention livable? Yes.
I love Portland, OR -- now that is a beautiful and livable city. Inconveniently, it's unlikely that I'll ever be able to live there.
The last thing I want to see is the kind of economic devastation you describe. I hope we can generate the political will to transform LA without a disaster. I have to think we'd need widespread availability of affordable, clean-fuel, no-emission cars. As you point out, most people can't afford $26K for a brand-new Prius. And Priuses still burn gasoline, just less of it. But if there was a clean car available for $15K, or if there were govt subsidies for working people to be able to afford them ... and there were safe bike lanes, separated from traffic, everywhere, people might ride more than they do. And the air would be better. But it seems that'd only make a small dent in the structural unsustainability of a car-centred city ...
April 26, 2008 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
In my favorite day-dreams, a large percentage of the profits from gas somehow gets diverted into modernizing our public transit system. A huge part of the reason people around here drive -- at least in the completely unscientific polls I've conducted of co-workers and friends -- is that it generally takes at least 2-3 times as long to get anywhere on public transit, if you can get there at all. I hope that high gas prices will slowly drive up demand for better service in public transit, but you're right that it's going to be miserable for people who can't afford other options for the near term.
I've traveled to many places, but one of experiences that stuck with me the most was visiting friends in Cork, Ireland for a week. Because I was visiting a group of people whose homes were fairly distributed, there was a lot of traveling around.... And we pretty much walked or bussed everywhere. Walking is typical for me when I'm vacation, but the thing that really stood out was that my friends, who weren't on vacation at all, simply accepted that it takes 30 minutes to travel a mile and a half. Until our culture shifts so we become a little less immediate-gratification-obsessed, it'll be difficult to make much progress in the public transit front.
April 26, 2008 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I do this too-- I like to imagine that we decide to say, I don't know, get rid of the Air Force for a couple years.
April 27, 2008 5:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have to say, for a blog centered squarely around US domestic politics, the TPM readership is surprisingly diverse, at least geographically. Canada, UK, Japan, Germany, Ireland. Well, perhaps that's to be expected from the cosmopolitan liberal elite... ahem.
Don't get me started on Los Angeles. As far as I know, the bulk of the LA area was built in the 1940s and 1950s, at a time when owning a car was already common in the US. I'm sure building the place the way it was done made perfect sense back then.
LA - the city where getting around is terrible if you don't own a car... and merely awful if you do.
April 26, 2008 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
We have passports, elitist snobs that we are ;)
April 26, 2008 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
codegen:
I hope this won't depress you.
I grew up in NYC. I've lived also in Stuttgart and now Oregon. But I was born in LA in 1945. We lived on Denny St. in North Hollywood. Then, our house was a block from the railroad and the dessert. We used to watch the tumbleweeds whip across the train tracks.
By 1949 I lived in New York City, at this time a city that rivaled many European cities in beauty and culture.
I have watched LA and NY, each city with a certain magic, descend into a bleak modernity.
The future beauty of America, in my opinion, will come from the vast spaces still undeveloped. Hopefully the current blight will cause a new kind of planning for growth. I won't be here, but one can hope looking out across Oregon's grand west.
April 26, 2008 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
LA must have been very different in 1945. I've seen old photos and footage from the LA area taken in the 1930s and 1940s; the city seemed to have a special style and flair, though most of that seems to be lost now.
New York, although a little too big and overcrowded for my taste, still is a good looking city. The old churches dwarfed by skyscrapers are so attractively idiosyncratic. Some parts of NYC very much reminded me of London, others of Amsterdam.
I've not traveled extensively across the US (I know many Americans haven't either, which I think is a shame), but the city I liked most is San Francisco. A unique place. Too many US cities are practically indistinguishable, but San Francisco stands out - not least because of its loony street layout which completely ignores the hills. Driving around there is an unforgettable experience.
This has nothing to do with anything, least of all gas prices, but here's a fragment of my memory of San Francisco: I was visiting the city with my friends late one November, the weather was unseasonably warm. We were walking down one of the quiet side streets in a residential area not too far from the downtown. There was no one in the street except two people throwing balloons filled with water at each other. A man and a woman, I would guess in their thirties. They were both laughing and clearly having a great time. And I was thinking, this is so totally weird, yet somehow it doesn't surprise me at all - not in San Francisco. The place is crazy, but not in a bad way.
April 26, 2008 5:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maria:
I just noticed your Frida Kahlo avatar. I just saw the large exhibit of her work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her life-story, like her art, is both fascinating and tragic.
April 29, 2008 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this. You should have mentioned auto, tire and oil companies bought up rail lines in the US in the early 1900s in order to force reliance on cars (and thus their products).
We need to go in the opposite direction. Our government needs to promote and subsidize public transportation and rail systems to ease congestion, green the environment, and make transportation cheaper and lessen our dependence on foreign oil. We need more light rail and less hummers.
April 26, 2008 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the risk of being accused of boundless optimism, I might venture that the days of plentiful, cheap, liquid fuel may not be entirely over. A lot of people think the future of biofuels is algae. That said, I'm all in favor of the idea of smart, careful, and robust revitalization of our public transportation systems, especially all types of rail, on a national scale.
The following is from The Mercury News, a Silicon Valley newspaper
Scientists estimate that a commercial algae farm could probably produce 5,000 gallons of oil per acre of land, compared to around 50 gallons an acre from soybeans and 600 gallons an acre from palm oil. Depending on the species and the manufacturing process, the algae could also be grown in the desert or other inhospitable places so they wouldn't tie up valuable land that could be used for food crops.
You can find other press releases here.
April 27, 2008 12:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is a new effort going on in the Bay Area to build these high density areas where mass transit is easily accessed. We of course have to do this in San Francisco because we have such little land mass.
Extending BART to SFO is the greatest achievement in Bay Area Transit in last few decades. I keep waiting for the day when BART runs from San Jose, Oakland, Pittsburgh, CA, Livermore, CA to San Francisco without breaking the loop. I believe Oakland is about to link BART or least get closer to it's airport. I believe there are rumors that the State of California and the Bay Area governments may consider a second tube beneath the San Francisco Bay.
Finally there is one other project one the minds of the good people California. The State of California is putting a measure on the ballot (I believe in November) to fund the high-speed rail from Los Angeles to San Francisco and Sacramento. If gas prices go up and higher, it just might pass.
Two-and-half hours from San Francisco to Los Angeles is a dream!
April 27, 2008 12:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sigh. I find the Bay Area transit system depressing. BART is good, but all the other systems -- which are almost always critical for getting to where you want to go -- are too infrequent to be completely useful. They're not useless, either, but it's just so horribly inefficient it blows my mind. To use the San Francisco buses, you have to know which lines are worth trying and which are completely unreliable. Commute hour buses frequently skip stops because they're already too full... It's a usable system, but only barely. It really could be soooo much better.
I agree that the SFO BART extension is fantastic, but there's so much more that could be done -- and discussion on that started back in the 70's.
April 27, 2008 4:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
What devastated intercity heavy rail service in the U.S. was the building of our interstate highway system initiated by president Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950's.
The public reason given to justify such a major building project was that the cold war required an increased ability to move people and material in a national emergency. However, who knows what other (auto and oil business?) considerations were involved.
Since highway construction and maintenance was funded with tax dollars the privately funded railroads couldn't compete well. The result was a tremendous consolidation of railroad companies, with those still surviving now carrying only freight, having dropped regular passenger service.
Today, Amtrak is the U.S. Government funded agency providing intercity passenger rail service, and it operates at a huge loss of tax dollars every year.
April 27, 2008 1:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey new10, I responded to your comments on CT's recent blog.
April 27, 2008 2:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hi SPQR:
Yeah, I come and go on some of these blogs and don't always keep up with the thread responses.
Whether to include ethanol or even sugars when discussing hydrocarbons is an interesting question. While they all fall under the broad rubric of organic chemistry, methanol is, of course, technically a member of the alcohol sub-group.
Its only my personal preference to group both methanol and sugars together with the pure hydrocarbon compounds when discussing energy sources. I prefer to do so because all of these compounds get their high potential as energy sources from the hydrogen within them.
It fascinates me to no end how plants use photosynthesis to break apart water molecules, take the hydrogen and releasing the oxygen into the atmosphere, to create their own sugar based food source using the hydrogen.
April 27, 2008 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is good to see this post and these comments. It is not as if there are not alternatives to the status quo. These kind of changes can take a generation or so. Seems like a better lifelong project for many folks than trying to be a global hegemony and wasting resources that could best be put to work here at home.
Think of how much track and rolling stock could be put in place instead all the military hardware and enduring bases we are building. Folks probably would not shoot at you or try to blow you up either.
If you ever visit Zurich, look carefully and you will see how many different forms of transit are in place. There are ferries on the lake and little light rail systems that quietly roll through the suburbs that surround the lake. There are even little trams that take folks up steep hills.
The really problematic distances in the US involve crossing most of the continent, e.g., West to East coast or even West to the Midwest. It's tough to get over the Sierras and Rockies although it is a beautiful journey by train if you have the time.
At least in Germany, even small places have quite a bit of culture so you do not have to travel to the big city. Here everyone with talent has to go to one of the major metropolitan areas. There, at least in the not so distant past, the community would support them and take pride in them. Even the transit system is a source of community pride.
Life can be different than it is now.
April 27, 2008 1:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Germany is a remarkably decentralized country. The largest city, Berlin, has somewhere over 3 million inhabitants - which is not much for a country of 80 million. Some areas are more densely populated than others, but there's nothing remotely close to, say, Nevada.
Interestingly, the other German speaking country is the opposite extreme - in Austria, a country of little over 8 million, more than 2 million live in the Vienna metropolitan area. That's more than one quarter of the population (this is partly due to the fact that a good chunk of Austria is in the Alps, and it's just hard to get high population density in mountains like that - think Sierra Nevada).
I don't have statistics, but I imagine a fairly high percentage of US population lives near the coast. This is completely natural, but unfortunately it leaves that huge "flyover country" in between. I have no doubt that the population density in the US is so uneven precisely because of the availability of cheap transportation. A not so good implication is that millions of people need to travel relatively large distances every day, and that is a massive waste of energy.
April 27, 2008 5:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
The catch is that another cheap source of carbon based fuel doesn't solve the other major problems - pollution and congestion.
In fact more cheap fuel would probably only make those problems worse. I don't think more expensive gas is necessarily a bad thing in the long term.
April 27, 2008 5:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Argh. The above was supposed to have been in reply to our Roman friend SPQR above.
April 27, 2008 6:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yet another post from a small town in Germany, where I live part of the year - the other in Kuwait.
Its all about economics - as the gas price increases, people's behaviour will change - they will a) switch to more energy efficient vehicles, and trade space in the burbs for a home closer to work and amenities. The increase in gas prices will come through either supply and demand - which is happening right now, or the process can be accelerated by a planned stepped increase in gas taxes - as has happened in Europe.
The impact in the US is already noticeable with the decline n the market share of large SUV's.
As apersonal anecdote - I have two vehicles. In Europe where gas is $9 a gal I drive a small peugeot diesel, which returns over 40 mpg, in Kuwait where gas is $1 per gal, I drive a Toyota land cruiser which returns less than 20 mpg.
Similarly, I am building a house in Germany, whose location is close to my partners work, and to the places we visit most frequently. We are installing an energy efficent wood burning stove, and a geothermal heat pump. Not because we are tree huggers, but over the next twenty years I believe fossil fuel prices are going in one direction only.
This is economics at work.
April 27, 2008 4:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 27, 2008 5:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
If the rise in gas prices is steady but slow, it should give people enough time to adjust. If some sort of big spike occurred (which I don't think is that likely), there could be trouble. If that happens, you'll really need a government that hadn't been drowned in a bathtub.
April 27, 2008 7:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jim Jubak, one of the really smart people about money stuff, has an interesting article arguing why he thinks $180 a barrel for oil is on its way.
The golden age (er, black gold, that is) may really by history now.
April 27, 2008 6:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
One thing he misses: these countries will probably ship out less oil and they need oil for their own purposes. Hence we will see more rapidly declining exports than even predicted by peak oil.
Assuming, of course, their their production numbers and announced reserves are accurate and not over-estimated. Which is probably the case and assumed by the people who do peak oil calculations.
April 27, 2008 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
What a fantastic thread! Far more substance and perspective than the usual take-our-pulse-every-5-seconds election coverage.
Thanks for starting it, codegen86, and to all the abroad people for letting us know what the current real-time situation is elsewhere.
I would only comment that gas prices are linked to oil prices and oil prices are what drives the entire global economy -- so, despite issues of transportation, expect the gas prices to ripple across things like non-local food production and manufacturing as well as the methane inputs into our current methods of agriculture and chemical (read pharmaceutical) industries.
April 27, 2008 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
This thread has also been almost shockingly troll-free.
April 27, 2008 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Two reasons:
a) it doesn't pander to knee-jerk emotional responses that benefit a particular candidate
b) you actually have to know something factual to participate (unlike rehashing talking points, etc.)
Most blogs I have done on energy have experienced the same quality of conversation, for similar reasons.
April 27, 2008 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just a quickie from Australia.
Petrol (gas) prices have gone from about AU$0.90 to AU$1.60 per litre for me in less than 12 months.
The really weird thing over here is that diesel costs about 10 - 20% MORE than petrol - go figure...
I live in a small town / village 30 to 50 km from the nearest larger centre where I can get any work.
It is making my Clydesdale horse look like a good investment for the not-too-distant future!
In Oz the increase in fuel prices has seen the almost certain demise of the 6-cylinder and bigger cars from the local industry.
Also, our national airline has just announced large cuts to domestic routes and flights, and a 'savage' review of international services due to fuel prices.
Food prices have increased significantly due to increased transport costs.
Add to this reports of riots in Indonesia, Africa and Yemen last weekend over petrol prices and anyone with any vision sees severe unrest and societal disruption in the not distant future.
Makes me glad I never had kids...
May 29, 2008 2:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
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