Paying more for gasoline has prompted Americans to do what climate change warnings and our number-one ranking in CO2 emissions couldn't do. This country is ending its long and dirty love affair with massive trucks and SUVs in favor of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. The reversal represents an enormous shift in trends, but it's nice to think more innovative transportation solutions may loom on the horizon, however distant.
According to the New York Times,
In what industry analysts are calling a first, about one in five vehicles sold in the United States was a compact or subcompact car during April, based on monthly sales data released Thursday. Almost a decade ago, when sport utility vehicles were at their peak of popularity, only one in every eight vehicles sold was a small car.While it's no secret to Americans that our gas, at approximately $3.45/gallon, still costs much less than Europe's average of $8.00/gallon, we still feel the crunch in our checking accounts, where it hurts most. But maybe this country's ready to consider transportation solutions beyond personal gas conservation efforts like buying smaller cars.The switch to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles has been building in recent years, but has accelerated recently with the advent of $3.50-a-gallon gas. At the same time, sales of pickup trucks and large sport utility vehicles have dropped sharply.
In another first, fuel-sipping four-cylinder engines surpassed six-cylinder models in popularity in April. -- NY Times
Namely, high-speed rail.
With gas prices historically low in the U.S., only one high-speed rail service exists, the Acela Express along the Northeast Corridor from Boston and Washington, D.C. More expensive gas in Europe, on the other hand, partially finances the extensive train system there:
Revenues from Europe's high gas taxes are used to fund a variety of things. One thing they have built is better public transportation, said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private equity firm.Good public transportation doesn't just save consumers money, either. It promotes less consumption of fossil fuels throughout the country:They gave people an alternative to driving, something we don't have in North America," said Tertzakian. -- CNN Money
Oil use in the United Kingdom has basically stayed flat from 1980 to now, while in France it's dropped 17%, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration.Interestingly, while presidential hopefuls McCain and Clinton clamor for a summer gas tax holiday that environmentalists and economists see as largely ineffectual to consumers and harmful to a more comprehensive energy policy, Barack Obama actually brought up the notion of high-speed rail in America recently.In the U.S., meanwhile, oil use is up 21% over the same period, although the country has added more people and seen its economy grow slightly faster. -- CNN Money
Recently endorsed by the Friends of the Earth Action for his stance against the gas tax holiday, Obama said this at a lunch with Indiana voters:
This is something that we should be talking about a lot more. We are going to be having a lot of conversations this summer about gas prices. And it is a perfect time to start talk about why we don't have better rail service. We are the only advanced country in the world that doesn't have high speed rail. We just don't have it. And it works on the Northeast corridor. They would rather go from New York to Washington by train than they would by plane. It is a lot more reliable and it is a good way for us to start reducing how much gas we are using. It is a good story to tell. -- TimeThe subject isn't part of Obama's platform, but maybe it should be. If gas prices stick where they are for a while or even hit the $5.00 mark like most Americans expect, high-speed rail could be poised to enter this car-obsessed country's consciousness as a viable part of the overall transportation picture.
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