B. Carfree

I don't know what the price of fuel is doing to motoring habits or the relative joys of cycling elsewhere or overall, but locally we've had a 25% drop in the price of gasoline this year and on the routes where I keep track of the number of cars that pass me there's been a doubling of motorists (or I'm just getting a lot slower). There hasn't been any housing built out beyond where I'm riding, so the increase is in the form of the same people choosing to drive more.

Yesterday was the first day of hunting season around here. Last year, I rode into the coast range on the first and second weekends of hunting season and saw a very slight increase in the number of motorists relative to a normal weekend. Today, it was just insane with pick-ups and SUVs. Fortunately, they weren't driving on any of the gravel roads that I was cruising on; I guess those 4WD things can't handle unpaved roads. (That's good for the deer and elk since they rarely hang out near the asphalt.)

I suspect that even our previous low price of $4/gal was high enough to discourage some pleasure motoring, but at $3/gal that pent-up demand is breaking out.

Roody

That's a good point. When it comes to many consumer goods, transport fuel is a small part of the total end cost, and a price increase is a small part of that small part.

downtube42

31,000 kCal per gallon at $3.00 per gallon is roughly one dollar for 10,000 kCal.
A banana is about $0.35 and 100 kCal, so that's... uh... $35 for 10,000 kCal?

(Did I get that right? If no, I'm sure somebody will speak up )

So yeah, gas is darn cheap fuel; no wonder we haul our lazy butts around in SUVs.

Too bad we can't digest the stuff. Somebody work on that.

prathmann

Agreed that petroleum at current prices is a great bargain in terms of energy content per dollar. But bananas score very low on that scale. An other example is potatoes - I get my russets at a local farmer's market at $0.25/lb which is about 1,500 kcal/dollar. Still not nearly as good a deal as petrol - but, OTOH, when transporting myself by bike using potatoes I only need enough energy to move a bit under 200 lbs. from place to place vs. moving over 3000 lbs. using the SUV.

B. Carfree

Around here we joke that SUVs are tools to convert reduced carbon molecules that originated in the ground into reduced carbon molecules on people's waistlines. It doesn't seem to be a very energy efficient process, but it is repeated so often that it does succeed.

Roody

Unfortunately, most of the carbon goes into the atmosphere!

Walter S

That makes bananas look like a bad deal. But of course we get a lot more than calories from eating bananas. That's because our bodies need a lot more than energy to keep going over the long haul. Last I checked you can't get an SUV to think and feel and love and post topics on BF.

Roody

And of course the banana emits a lot less pollution than the gasoline, other than a little fart or two.

gerv 

I've often wondered though. :grin:

okane

...and perhaps someone has commented on this, but fuel prices always seem to go down when election time is near, but go up during peak travel times. I wonder why that is? Maybe we should change election dates to coincide with peak travel times.

Lone

yeah, buy a white one. j/k.

Walter S

I don't think the banana is responsible for that. After all, you don't have to eat it. If you do eat the banana the farts are yours

tandempower

When gas hit $4/gallon, no one really understood why the economy was falling apart because they don't realize it's death by 1000 cuts. When everyone drives to work in every job along every supply chain and finance and corporate cost-sharing tie everything together, there is practically no cost anywhere on any supply chain that isn't creeping up as fuel prices rise. It's like a large traffic jam that forms because everyone keeps gradually accelerating and shortening following distance until everyone has to start slowing down because there's nothing else to do. It's not just the car in front of you going slow that's slowing you down but also the ones blocking you from changing lanes, the ones slowing them down, etc. etc. up the chain. That's how rising fuel prices work in an economy where everything is transported by internal combustion power.

Now, what will happen as fuel prices drop? Basically it will be like a widespread fiscal stimulus program for everything, every cost, etc. (except human-powered activities of course). So for a while, many people will probably grow their dependency by using more fuel to do more things. Then, however, the economy will tighten up in terms of competitive business and those who grew their dependency will be squeezed to maintain earnings levels that they built up using cheap fuel. Then, at some point, fuel costs will begin inching up again and gradually initiating the 'traffic jam' of recession. This is the bubble-burst. It's happening now with the stimulus-driven stock markets and later it will happen with the cheap-gas-driven economy.

Roody

I think you're over-emphasizing the role of fuel prices. The last recession was certainly not caused by fuel prices, according to everything I read about it. Again, fuel costs are just one portion of the final cost of goods.

It would be nice if somebody could find some research to settle this question rationally.

tandempower

Economics and social science generally have too many combined factors to deal with to argue definitively about one cause over others. All you can really do is hypothesize about any one or more factors and consider how those factors affect other factors. My point about fuel is that it has a compound influence on everything because of all the factors that have fuel as a cost-component. So when you pay to ship a truckload of goods, you're paying for the fuel burnt in the truck but also the fuel used to ship the tires that are mounted on the truck, plus the fuel used to ship each of the products to the distribution center where they are loaded into the truck, etc. Plus everyone who's filling their tank up once or more times a week has gone from paying $20/week to $40/week, which is $80/month more, which is the same as getting an $80/month income cut to their disposable income. Now factor in all those costs that get raised to compensate for the rising fuel costs, i.e. the insurance company gives its employees a raise to cover cost-of-living increases, which raises insurance premiums, so that's another cut to disposable income. Then people start cutting back on things like eating out or expensive coffee or whatever the unnecessarily expensive fad was at that time, and that cuts into the revenues and incomes of those businesses and employees. Then the government starts bailing businesses and people out and fears of inflation come into play, so people start cutting their spending more and saving more to prepare for impending inflation, etc. etc.

Fuel prices may not be the only factor, and they may not ultimately be the biggest factor, but it doesn't really matter because all that really matters is that they served as a triggering effect to set off a snowballing process of cutbacks and consolidations that were primed to occur anyway simply because the economy was running at less than maximum efficiency to begin with. That is irony of all these pushes for more arbitrary spending and wage-raises etc. to stimulate economic growth; all they really do is pad the economy with unnecessary budgetary spending that lends itself to consolidation when the next recession gets triggered, which causes the bubble to burst that much more the next time it does. People hate recession so they try to make the economy recession-proof but I don't understand how people think they can control every single factor that can trigger a snowball of recessionary cuts when it is the very essence of rationality to cut costs and produce things more efficiently with less waste and expenditures.

Ekdog

Here we go again.


Lower gas prices boost US SUV sales in October

Ekdog

Remember this the next time you're told there's no money for that bike path your town needs or for decent light rail service:

BBC News - Fossil fuel promises are being broken, report says

TallTravel

Gas price decline and elections in the United States. Any statistics available?

Smallwheels

On Friday I noticed a gas price sign in my neighborhood. It was $2.999 for regular unleaded. Until fuel is priced lower than $2 I won't consider fuel prices low. Fuel prices are high because of speculation not because of demand or production costs. The stock market is the same way.

Three weeks ago I borrowed a truck to move some things. The trip wasn't very far. I bought a little over a gallon of fuel to replace what was used. It gave me the feeling of being poor because of just how much money this truck would need to operate. Would I want to spend three dollars per trip going to work in the middle of town on fuel costs alone?

Long ago I wrote that my new economy car had cost me $2 per mile because I didn't use it very often. When in stingy mode I think that I would never want to spend that much money on a car. My mind is just in a different place than the conventional motorists.

350htrr

$177.79 Is what it would cost me to fill up my truck when totally empty, I wouldn't call that cheap. Now that is diesel, but really? Diesel is cheaper to make, much less refining needed than for gas so I'm wondering what's up with that?...

Ekdog

For what it costs you to fill up, you could buy a bike! I thank my lucky stars that I'm car-free!

Six jours

I spend more on bicycles than on gas.

I wonder what Noam Chomsky would have to say about that. It would doubtless be hilariously wrong.

Ekdog

What has Mr. Chomsky got to do with this?

Roody

I guess six jours thought he was trolling on the politics subforum.

I-Like-To-Bike

What kind of responses was the OP trolling for with the original OT post about current gas price drop and question, "Should I buy a SUV?"

Was he expecting posts from anybody declaring that recent lower gas price has made any difference in their LCF related transportation or lifestyle choices?

Or was it just one more troll for OT political and economic commentary from the usual suspects as well as a few more smug comments about the lifestyle of those not in synch with the OP's choice.