Rising gas prices have ended America’s supposed love affair with the automobile.
If you don’t like $3 a gallon gas, just wait a few years. It’s sure to go to $5 and beyond.
In fact, gasoline already sells for the equivalent of $8 a gallon in Britain and parts of Europe. The difference is mostly due to high fuel taxes that have long prompted the Euros to live a far more energy-efficient lifestyle than Americans do.
Now, the inescapable laws of supply and demand are forcing Americans to change our wasteful ways in a manner that lectures about the threat of global warming never did. Simply put, the world is running out of cheap oil. America, with just 6 percent of the world’s population, uses 25 percent of its energy. Other nations, notably India and China, are developing their own economies and drawing on the same limited oil reserves Americans long assumed were our exclusive patrimony. That’s why the $3 a gallon you’re paying today is just the beginning. Just wait until a billion Chinese hit the roads in their own SUVs!
Long before that automotive Armageddon, we in the Denver area will look back at the 2004 election in which we approved the FasTracks rapid transit system as the smartest move we ever made. Years before the first car heads out on the new rail lines, FasTracks is already reshaping the map of metro Denver as cities, counties and developers craft “transit-oriented developments” featuring more compact and convenient living clustered around the upcoming transit lines.
I already laugh at gasoline prices because my 1901 Capitol Hill home is within walking distance of The Denver Post. Merely by strolling to and from work during my 35 years here, I’ve walked about 25,000 miles. That’s equal to the circumference of the Earth and a savings of thousands of gallons of gasoline.
As a result, I put just 2,000 miles on my faithful 1987 Ford F-250 diesel pickup last year, much of it on trips to my farm in Phillips County. Even a recent foot injury didn’t force me to the “automobile uber alles” lifestyle touted by John Andrews and Jon Caldara, to cite my two favorite foils from the anti-environmental Dark Side. The No. 10 bus whisks me to work in 10 minutes for $1.35, sidestepping Downtown Denver’s extortionate parking rates and the hassles of city driving.
(On a personal note, I don’t know the name of that black driver who greets all her passengers with her cheerful upbeat message. But “God bless you,” too, Ma’m.)
Anyway, Caldara and Andrews are fighting a desperate rear guard action to overturn the FasTracks vote, seizing on increases in construction costs triggered by rising concrete, steel and copper prices. But in fact, the John-Jon twins are on the wrong side of history. Rising concrete and asphalt costs are sending the price tags of the new highways they tout over rapid transit rising much faster than FasTracks costs are – even though Colorado already faces more than an $80 billion shortfall of highway construction funds through 2030.
Tell us, John-Jon: How are you boys going to enjoy sitting in your Beemers when gasoline hits $10 a gallon and the traffic jams on our highways are in woeful contrast to the rail cars flashing by on their separate guideways?
In fact, RTD is already bringing costs back in line, mostly by soliciting public/private partnerships to build and operate the four new commuter rail lines that will serve DIA, Golden, Lakewood, Westminster, Boulder, Longmont, Arvada and Adams County. The new rail lines that will someday offer most of my readers the same ease and flexibility in getting to work or leisure that I enjoy today by simply walking or catching the No. 10 will be built on time and on budget.
And when that happy day comes, you can join me in laughing at the ridiculous price of gasoline.
Bob Ewegen (bewegen@denverpost. com) is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has written on state and local government since 1963.
