Gas prices knock bicycle sales, repairs into higher gear

Ted Mittelstaedt

"Dane Buson" <dane@unseen.edu> wrote in message
newsvbmf5-734.ln1@curare.zuvembi.homelinux.org...
> In rec.bicycles.misc Ted <nobody@pseudo.borked.net> wrote:
> > "Four-dollar-a-gallon gas is good for business ? if you run a
> > bike shop. Commuters around the country are dusting off their
> > old two-wheelers ? or buying new ones ? to cope with rising fuel
> > prices, bicycle dealers say..."
> >
> > Associated Press article: http://xrl.us/BikeShops
>
> It reminds an awful lot of the articles we've seen at the beginning of
> summer the last two years. Bog knows I've seen an increase in bike
> commuters the last two summers [1]. I expect lots more this year,
> especially as we get closer to STP time [2].
>
> It does make me wonder, if a small bump in price to $4 is enough to
> cause changes, how much would a real price spike change? What would
> people do at $6? At $8 a gallon?
>

It won't ever happen in the US.

As oil prices continue to rise, the cost of doing stuff like pulling 'ye
olde oil
furnace' in the basement out and replacing it with Natural Gas becomes
cheaper than continuing to buy oil, as a result more people do that and
oil consumption drops. It now becomes economical to extract oil from
tar sands and such and people start doing that so supply rises. It will be
much more expensive oil, but it won't be double today's prices in
todays dollars, and it will mainly be fueling freight trains and delivery
trucks
where the fuel costs are spread out over a lot of people.

And in another 2 years the Toyota Prius will be plug-in (according to
Toyota) and you will see increasingly people powering their Priuses by
wall electricity. In the US, the percentage of electric power generated
by burning oil has been dropping like a rock, the percentage of electric
power generated by burning coal is rising, and by burning natural gas, and
by wind. And the US has a lot more stocks of natural gas than of oil,
and our coal reserves dwarf both of those.

In another 5 years, all the major automakers will have plug in hybrids.
All current presidential candiates have strongly endorsed tax credits
for plug in hybrids.

Cost per mile of an electric car is about a quarter of that of gasoline,
see:

http://www.team-fate.net/wordpress/?page_id=11

And last but probably most importantly, the Arab countries in the Mid-East
frankly don't like the US. They have had 50 years of European and US
interference, everything from the British colonization efforts to the UN
carving Israel out of Palestine, and the US mid-east interference. They
simply want Europe and the US to go away and find some other place
to get fuel from. The Mid East Arabs are jumping for joy at the prospect
of selling all their oil to China because unlike the Western countries which
have this annoying hangup about Human Rights issues, China couldn't give
a damn if every Arab has 50 wives all wrapped in burkas.

By the end of your lifetime you will see the United States pretty
independent
of foreign oil. It will be very painful to get "over the hump" in the
transition
from gasoline to more expensive gasoline and electricity, but it
will happen. It is, actually, much more a problem of retraining people
in how they use their cars, and remembering that every second their car is
sitting in their driveway or their garage, it needs to be plugged into an
electrical outlet,. recharging. And it is also one of dealing with city
laws.

For example in my city, a large number of homes have no garages or
driveways. People park their cars on the street in front of their homes.
Now, imagine what would happen if all those cars were plug in hybrids.
If allowed, people would be running extension cords from their homes
across their lawns, across the sidewalks, to their cars. I am quite sure
the city would get rather pissed off about this, and would likely pass
an ordinance prohibiting it. That would require those people to run
conduit under the sidewalk, which makes it a permanent electrical
installation -all the sudden, you now have a requirement for permitting
and you suddenly have added a $500 bill for an electrician to put in
a remote electrical outlet just to charge your car's battery.

Ted

Jym Dyer

> Just read a NYT ... article about this in the US.

=v= This one?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/b.../10transit.html

> Public transit use is up about 5% in the larger cities with
> well developed transit systems (Boston, NYC, SF) and a little
> less so with less developed or newer public transit like
> Houston. Southern cities, with more car-centric attitudes
> have lower increases than northern or western cities.

=v= Actually, though this is true of the San Francisco
metropolitan area, but not San Francisco itself. Notice that
the _Times_ article goes on to mention ridership increases
in the regional BART and Caltrain systems, but not for the
city's Muni. Muni is so messed up that the densest city on
the West Coast is *losing* riders even as transit ridership
increases in nearby sprawling communities!

=v= This is because mayor Gavin Newsom has saddled the city with
simultaneous cutbacks and fare hikes, with predictable results.
Then he hired some fare inspectors ("Muni Goonies"), who have
not managed to find enough fare-evasion going on to justify
their own salaries, but who have certainly managed to make the
experience much less pleasant. One of them yelled out their
apparent mantra: "If you don't like it, call a cab."

=v= I don't like it, so I bike.

> I'm seeing *many* more bicyclists now on road and path locally
> as well.

=v= The nice weather might also have something to do with it.
<_Jym_>

P.S.: Mayor Newsom is currently off touring to explain how
"green" he is. If he should happen to drop by your town,
drop by and ask him how ecological it is, exactly, to destroy
a city's transit system.

Jym Dyer

> As oil prices continue to rise, the cost of doing stuff
> like pulling 'ye olde oil furnace' in the basement out and
> replacing it with Natural Gas becomes cheaper than continuing
> to buy oil, as a result more people do that and oil consumption
> drops. It now becomes economical to extract oil from tar
> sands and such and people start doing that so supply rises.

=v= These are both finite, carbon-spewing sources, and the
"economy" of the latter is burdened by the energy required in
its extraction, which has a multiplying effect.

> In another 5 years, all the major automakers will have plug
> in hybrids. All current presidential candiates have strongly
> endorsed tax credits for plug in hybrids.
>
> Cost per mile of an electric car is about a quarter of that
> of gasoline, see ...

=v= The "economy" of this is poised to be thwarted as well.
The dumbass peddling of PHEVs as "GEE WHIZ 100+ MPG!" ignores
the "gallons" that go into making the electricity, with zero
thought to the consequences of increased demand. If PHEVs are
to be anything resembling a solution, they would have to be
deployed widely, and if they're deployed widely, the price of
electricity goes up. And, since conversion of energy from one
form to another is always less efficient, carbon-spewing would
actually *increase* thanks to these supposedly-green vehicles.
<_Jym_>

Jens Müller

joseph.santaniello@gmail.com schrieb:
>
> I've only used public transport in a handful of US cities, all of
> which were much larger than Oslo (New York, Boston, Chicago, LA, SF, a
> few others) and light-years better. Since Oslo has only 500,000 people
> or so, it's not really a good comparison. Compared to a city of
> 500,000 in the US it might be pretty good. I don't recall the commuter
> break-down. I'll tyr to find it. The important thing for bike usage is
> distances needed to be travelled and what sort of destinations. If a
> super-market is a long haul, only hard-core types will ride bikes
> there. If it is to pop down to a baker for some fresh bread 3 blocks
> away, you'll get more takers.

In usual German towns you'll have a supermarket (or discount store, like
Aldi) in about 2-3 km at most.

Matt O'Toole

On Tue, 13 May 2008 17:35:27 +0000, Stephen Harding wrote:

> max wrote:
>
>> I'm thinkin that the law of unintended consequences might just find us
>> watching (for example) our beloved Illinois Prairie Path, Fox River
>> Trail and Great Western trail and Virgil Gilman trail disappear under
>> the ballast of a light rail line in oh... twenty years or less.
>>
>> I'm just sayin.
>
> But technically, that's what the proclaimed purpose of "rail banking" as
> promoted by Rails-to-Trails groups. Save these rights of way for future
> use when maglev of whatever reoccupies them. In the meantime, they become
> public recreational facilities.
>
> Personally, I don't think they'll ever get converted back. We'll be
> driving around in our personal hydrogen powered vehicles before we have to
> choose re-creating a passenger rail network.

I doubt the hydrogen dream will ever be realized, at least in our
lifetime. But just try to take those trails away once people are used to
them.

Matt O.

Chris T

On May 12, 9:29 pm, max <betat...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> In article <857e2165db39cfbcc79dcb334f77d...@pseudo.borked.net>,
>
> i'm not seeing a significant amount of traffic on the Fox River Trail
> yet, and my workplace bike-to-work website trending seems unrelated to
> gas prices, although i've seen a _few_ more bikes on site. I would
> opine that $4/gallon isn't a big* motivator yet.
>
> Given the canonical suburbs/commute-distances, at least in west
> surburban chicagoland, i'm not entirely convinced we'll see much
> commuter biking, unless it is first preceded by an inter/intra-suburban
> migration.
>
> The routes just aren't here for more than fairly short commutes unless
> your endpoints are proximal to the few rails-to-trails bicycle
> superhighways.
>
> *Big... There's two kinds of big. there's population-doubling big
> (wow! there's 4X as many bicycle commuters!) (translation: instead of
> two there's 8... woo. hoo.).
>
> And then there's percentages of the gross population big (up from 2%
> last year, 8% of the Kane County commuters rode their bikes today) (not
> true, but it would be a big number).
>
> I think any changes in cycle commuting numbers occurring right now are
> occurring in the "five times a *verrry*smmmall* number" regime. I think
> that the %daily-commuter numbers is still fairly constant. Say up
> from1.3% to 1.5% (numbers kinda made up).
>
> that's what i thimk.

As someone who lived much of his 26 years in the western suburbs of
Chicago, I can state with certainty that bicycle commuting is not
something that will increase. The roads are not designed for bikes.
Simple as that. And it would take a huge amount of household
reshuffling for it to even begin to happen. Many people live a long
distance from their jobs, requiring commutes of 20+ miles each way.
If people were to relocate to within a reasonable distance to their
jobs it /could/ happen, but I doubt it. The sprawling nature of the
Chicago suburbs make it unreasonable to think bicycle commuting will
be commonplace in the future. There will be smaller, more fuel
efficient cars, I'm certain. But that's about it.

Living in Chicago now, I've sold my car and ride my bike everywhere.
This isn't in response to gas prices, it's just logical. Chicago has
a decent transport system (it would be much better and on time if
people stopped driving!) and plenty of bike friendly roads to get
anywhere. I don't miss my car at all. However, one of the major
issues with this city having a large number of commuters is the
weather. I'm a year round rider, but many of the people I see riding
now are not. They're unwilling to ride in 5 degrees, the snow, the
rain. And, I admit, it sometimes sucks. A lot. But it's a decision
I made because I feel it's the right thing to do. Most people who
have a car in the city simply don't need it. There's no reason to
drive a car 4 miles from your lakeview condo to your job downtown.
It's foolish.

Hmmm, I fear I've begun to rant. :-)