When Jessica Newman filled up her Subaru right after Memorial Day, she decided she couldn’t take the $50-per- week gasoline bill anymore.
Newman, the executive director for the Rock Bottom Foundation, e-mailed three colleagues who live in her Highland neighborhood and formed a carpool to their Louisville offices last week.
“One of my fellow riders calculated it and said he saves $10 in gas per day,” Newman said. “I haven’t had to fill up my gas tank since a week ago last Saturday, which is not normal for me.”
The national average price for gas hit $4.02 a gallon Monday. With the statewide average at $3.94, many drivers are looking for ways to cut costs.
Javier Izquierdo, an intensive-care unit nurse at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center, said he has turned to bicycling 4 miles to work.
A recent survey of 1,000 drivers commissioned by Access America, a travel-insurance provider, showed that 74 percent of respondents said rising gas prices would prompt them to change their driving habits.
Twenty-six percent of respondents said they would cut recreational and travel driving first; 21 percent said they would consolidate or reduce errands.
“I can’t say I’ve gone to the extreme of taking the bus, but I’m a little better on doing more of my errands at once,” Shannon Loo said as she filled her Acura on Monday.
Only 7 percent of Access America’s respondents listed carpooling as a first step, 6 percent would turn to walking or biking, 4 percent would use more public transportation, and 3 percent would buy a more fuel-efficient or hybrid car.
Retiree Austin Tebeau drives friends around the metro area so they can walk door to door as Jehovah’s Witnesses, racking up $200 a month in gas costs.
“Some offer to pay, and I might have to take them up on it,” Tebeau said.
Daria Serna, a spokeswoman for the Regional Transportation District, said RTD has seen a 9 percent increase in January-to-April ridership, from 31,050,846 in 2007 to 33,816,352 this year.
“We’re hitting record highs; we’ve never seen these kinds of numbers on the RTD,” Serna said, citing riders’ efforts to go green, rising gas prices and traffic congestion.
Stacey Stegman of the Colorado Department of Transportation said traffic has declined through the Eisenhower Tunnel, a good barometer for area traffic trends. The tunnel in April saw a daily average of 27,208 vehicles, compared with 28,046 in April 2007. May brought a decline from 26,786 last year to 25,908 this year.
“Traffic is down this year, but we don’t know if it’s because of gas prices or because we’ve been having bad weather in the mountains,” Stegman said.
Stegman said she thinks traffic will increase in coming months, despite rising fuel costs.
For now, Loo looks at her $52.87 receipt with a wince.
“Yeah, we’re feeling it,” she said.
Alex McCarthy: 303-954-1381 or amccarthy@denverpost.com
Due to an artist’s error, the graphic below listed an incorrect gasoline cost per mile for the 2008 Honda Odyssey with automatic transmission and 3.5-liter engine with variable cylinder management. The correct cost, calculated by fueleconomy.gov is 20 cents per mile.
