77Univega

--- Some posters have surmised how the price of gasoline will affect bicycle usage. For those of us who remember the great gasoline shortage of 1973, it was not the price of gas but its unavailability that drove citizens to take to their bicycles. There were long lines at the gas pumps. People were willing to pay any amount when it was available. I advocate bicycling to prepare for the inevitable shortage of gas.

Did that gas shortage affect your bike usage?

HereNT

Nope, but I wasn't born for another three years. Of course, the current situation doesn't effect me at all either - I'd have to own something that used gasoline

Cyclaholic

I was 7 years old in '73 but I remember sitting in the car with my dad in a gas lineup. I found out later in life that it was what led my parents to start commuting to work by public transport, something I assumed they always did.

77Univega

I took time off from work to wait in line at the gas pump. Once my car was refueled, I parked it in the garage and commuted by bicycle or used the bus.

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Poguemahone

Interesting point. As the price of gas has risen, the demand for it has slightly increased, not decreased as one might expect. This leads me to believe that gasoline is underpriced as a commodity, and could be priced a good deal higher. I suspect gas could be ten bucks a gallon and many would still pay it, as they see gasoline consumption as an important facet of their lifestyle. If supply tightens, you'll see panic. Otherwise, just grumbling about the price.

mpop

2 things, first I was not born till the end of 76, but the main thing I want to say is to HereNT, gas prices will and do affect you, go to the local grocery store, the price to deliver those goods to you also include the cost of gas, do you really thing the trucking companys eat those costs because they care about you, no they could care less about the customers as long as they keep buying food, they will just pass the price of gas onto the service, which is passed to the store which will pass the increase on to you. And bike and bike stuff will go up with gas prices.

oboeguy

Ah, some sense on the gas issue. Yes, gas is underpriced, IMO. People whine and complain about the price, but still guzzle it. They're like lemmings headed for the cliff...

What I don't get is the complaining. The people who say they have to change vacation plans really bemuse me. Suppose you drive 500 miles each way for vacation. Suppose you get 25mpg. An extra dollar per gallon is a mere $40 -- not a huge sum of a money for anyone who has enough to drive that far for vacation, IMO. Now cut the the mpg in half or double the distance and you're talking $80 more. Still not much (and WTF are you doing driving 1000 miles each way?!? ).

For the record, I wasn't around in '73.

cruentus

I was 8 years old during the first gas crisis. As I recall, the bicycle boom was already well under way before the gas crisis hit -- squillions of baby boomers in their twenties all got the fitness bug at the same time. It seemed like everyone and his mother had a "10 speed".

When talking about the price of gas, one must take into account the affect of inflation. Directly comparing today's prices to prices of 20 years ago is pointless. Adjusted for inflation, today's gas prices have not surpassed the historic high prices from the early 1980's, when gas was about $3/gal in today's money. Gas will probably have to rise to $5/gal before people start changing their driving habits to any great extent. I doubt you will see any great increase in bikes used for transportation.

HereNT

Yeah, there's that, but honestly, I don't notice that as much. I don't eat much food. When it starts effecting the price of whiskey.... And most of the trucks could start running on grain fuel with virtually no change. A lot of them out here already do. And as the guy was saying about people's vacation plans, it's not going to be a huge amount of difference, especially since diesel is cheaper than regular gas. If it's $100 more to ship a tractor trailer full of groceries to the store, how much more is that going to be for my coffee beans, which are probably just one of the few things that they are hauling on that truck? Pennies?

mpop

True it would only be pennies, if the companies only rasied prices by their costs. But the CEO of the companies will say we can blam gas prices for the increase in price on the shelfs and jack up the price more then they need to, $.50 maybe up to $1.50 if they felt that people would still buy their stuff. Then the store managers will jack up the price by that much, and just might tag on a little bit more for themselfs.

sestivers

What inevitable shortage of gasoline do you forsee?

I wasn't alive during the last shortage, but since we don't have a shortage now, this fact remains:

Gasoline is like cigarettes, it doesn't matter how much it costs, people are going to buy essentially the same amount of it.

* jack *

I was born in '74, but I owe my affinity for bikes to the gas shortage and subsequent 'bike boom',
primarily because of my 3 older brothers. They had some of the coolest old lugged steel road bikes,
lots of shiny chrome and bright colors, with exotic-sounding French and Italian names... I fell in love
with bikes before I could walk... and I owe it all to the 70's gas shortage. Thanks, OPEC!

Roughstuff

Alot of the 'gas lines' in the 1970s were due to people 'topping up their tanks' because they feared running out of gas---it was a vicious hoarding/inventory cycle. Most people, under normal conditions, drive with their tank 1/3 to 2/3rds full. If you decide to keep your tank topped up at 90% thats a huge increase in overall gas demand, and it was almost entirely due to Jimmy Carter's wonderful economic policies. Once markets were allowed to function normally gas prices (along with most petrochemicals) collapsed.

roughstuff

-=(8)=-

I remember the '73 nonsense well. Odd / Even days...people fighting at the
pumps etc...
At the risk of getting Mod slapped, the 'shortage' was an invention of all the oil companies. There was plenty of gas, just not a legitimate reason to raise prices
so the companies united in promoting a gas shortage for the sake of shameless
profiteering. Sort of the same thing thats happening now.
But as others have pointed out, in todays lazy, apathetic society no one is
going to stop an SUV driver from heading to the mall. They could charge 5.00
a gallon and people will complain but they will still drive two blocks to the liqour
store or WaL-MArt without thinking twice.

genec

I loved cruising by long lines at the local pumps... I had just gotten back into cycling, which I had done earlier going to elementary school. I went through the usual phase of car love in high school and then rediscovered cycling in time for the gas crisis. I kept hoping that the crisis would get worse and one day a week would be a no driving day...

I can totally relate to this history of cycling in the 70s.

MichaelW

The issue of food prices and oil prices is worth noting. Why is it that our food travels such huge distances? Why is all cheese made in a central factory in Philadelphia then trucked and shipped around the world? Is is too difficult to make cheese close to where cows live?
I recently rode past a local honey producer and bought a few jars from a box at the end of his garden. It was much better than the stuff shipped in from China or Mexico.
If it is economically viable to transport this stuff around the world then transport is too cheap.

Bekologist

Rising fuel costs affect the cost of every consumer good sold. From the fertilizer used on the crops, to the fuel used to transport the seeds to the farmer and the crops to the middleman, to the costs transporting goods to the public, and even the cost of the packaging, it is incremental and pervasive.Even some organic farmers I know at a fabulous farmer's market here have told me about having to charge a little more than a few years ago when gas cost less than half as much as it does today.

Is there a fuel 'shortage?' No. OPEC restricts or expands oil production (in turn, affecting the cost of sweet crude on the futures market) to reflect their interests in the global economy. Other oil producing countries like Venezuela enjoy riding the wave of increased price of crude. Are fossil fuels in finite supply? yes. Are prices high here? not as high as they are going to go!

Those rising fuel costs do affect all of us, even those of us that do not have a car. Remember a year or two ago, one of the big uber conglomerates (RJR/Nabisco or whoever they've merged with) announced they were raising costs on all their goods because of transportation costs. Not just coffee beans, but everything they make (which is a heckuvalot) on the grocery store shelves.


And manufacturers are also shrinking weights in packaging and charging the same under the guise of the 'healthy serving size" and other deceiving ways to screw the consumer.
A 10 ounce box of cheerios costs the same a fourteen ounce box cost a year ago.

But, that's another story of big business screwing the public.

77Univega

--- Check out Dr. Colin Campbell's site: https://www.hubbertpeak.com/campbell/
His predictions provoke my memory of the gas "shortage" of 1973 and how the efficacy of the bicycle got seroius consideration.

dedhed

you're talking $80 more. Still not much (and WTF are you doing driving 1000 miles each way?!? ).


If $80 isn't much, send me a check. In my world it is. Me and my children will be driving 1200 mi one way in august from WI to CO. to visit the other half of my family who I rarely get to see for my sisters 25th anniversary that's WTF. Some people's worlds are just a little bigger and more complicated than yours.

cruentus

Carter wasn't the President during the '73 gas crisis, Nixon was. Carter was President during the '79 gas shortages.

CyLowe97

Huh??? Carter was not in office until 1977.... Nixon until he left in shame in '74, then the ever popular Jerry Ford until Carter took over in 1977.... So how was the shortage in the early/mid-70's 'almost entirely due to Jimmy Carter's wonderful economic policies"? Did he glut the market with peanuts or something?


[edit] Beaten to the comment by cruentus.... who also provided more info than me....

sbhikes

It's outrageous how much money I save by not driving. Even though my drive to work would only be 10 minutes. I have managed to save enough money in the last two years that I could actually tell my boss to take this job and shove it, end then relax for a year. I don't care about the price or availability of oil. My fantasy sustains me.

On the subject of the price of food, if only growing your own would be a money-saver. I'm not sure it would be a savings to grow a veggie garden. You have to buy all the raw materials retail, then there's your un-subsidized household water, and the inevitable risk of loss due to incompetence, pests or disease. I'd like to try it one day anyway. So far our yard is too shady.

Roughstuff

I pay a bit more in rent living closer to the town and to the bus routes, but is just so much more convenient and enjoyable. I have never tried to gauge the money savings, if any; but the freedom from the hassle of owning a car, maintenance, parking, inspection, repairs, is worth its weight in gold. I love the way I can just flip my bike upside down and clean the whole shabang with a toothbrush and solvent.

Never owned my own place so never tried gardening.

roughstuff

Roughstuff

Good point. I forget those wonderful days had two 'crises' not just one. The policies were the same though; price controls and excessive regulation. Once the markets were allowed to function normally, prices collapsed.

roughstuff

H23

I remember the late 70's gas crisis. I was just a kid playing in the alley, but I remember a teenager on a "ten-speed" that regularly went into garages with a rubber tube and siphoned gasoline out of cars. He emerged from the garages with-- and this is strange, some type of plastic bag that was filled tight with gas. He rode away with it under his arm.