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Dark Cloud Of High Fuel Prices Has Silver Lining For Hillsborough

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 12, 2008

It's hard to find a personal upside to high gasoline prices. We see more cars running out of gas on the roadside and family budgets are hurting.

But there are some bright spots, especially for urban areas such as Hillsborough County, which has many tools to help residents use less gasoline painlessly.

Ridership on HART buses is up - express business is up 29 percent over last year - and finally the bus agency is building the support needed for an overdue expansion of service.
Carpooling also is up sharply. Bay Area Commuter Services tells us that in May more local people registered online to share rides to work than had signed up in all of 2007. Its EZ-ride services, at http://209.208.59.97/ezridebase/login.asp, matches homes and destinations to suggest potential ride-mates.

The agency also helps businesses manage a telecommuting option, which has proved itself to be a productive way to boost employee morale while cutting commuting costs.

"I hate to benefit from bad news," says Sheila Martin, the state-funded agency's manager of planning and marketing, but high gas prices are keeping her busy. The same thing is happening nationwide. In the first four months of the year, Americans drove 20 billion fewer miles than the same period a year ago.

As a result, roads and parking garages are slightly less crowded, traffic deaths are down, and auto insurance rates also have a good chance to fall.

With more people sharing cars, it also makes sense in the Tampa Bay area to begin planning for high-occupancy-vehicle lanes that would give buses and cars with passengers an advantage in traffic. The Census Bureau says 75 percent of workers commute alone in their cars, but here it's still easy to see long lines of vehicles carrying no one but the driver. And it is impossible to find an HOV lane anywhere in this urban area.

But you can, if you live in a participating neighborhood, join a bike pool and bicycle to work in a group.

The area's reputation as one of the deadliest for bicyclists and pedestrians is not irreparable. Narrow bike lanes on busy boulevards aren't the answer, but planners should investigate how to create a safe network for bicycles and small scooters. If safer routes were available, more people would be willing to go to work or shopping at a slower speed and with super energy efficiency. It's dangerous for motorbikes and the like to compete for the same space needed by fast cars and trucks.

Retrofitting the suburbs for the era of high-priced fuel is a challenge for cities everywhere, and the first to find solutions will enjoy a competitive advantage.

It is essential that elected leaders resist pressure to gut planning agencies, and they must not relax growth rules for rural areas to try to jumpstart homebuilding. Housing prices have suffered the most in the car-dependent suburbs, and homeowners there need help, not taxpayer-subsidized competition.

Another advantage of higher gasoline prices has been discovered by retail businesses in small towns. They're seeing an uptick in traffic as local residents shop nearer to home instead of driving long distances to regional malls. It may be no net gain for the economy, but it is good news for small, long-suffering businesses.

Oil at $140 a barrel is encouraging some manufacturing to move back to the United States. It's driven by the bottom line - the opportunity to cut shipping costs by making the products nearer to where they will be sold.

As we have noted earlier, high fuel costs have sparked interest in the four-day work week to cut commuting costs 20 percent; Hillsborough County schools say they are already using a short week this summer. In Utah, the governor is switching most state workers to a four-day week beginning Aug. 1, inspiring a newsletter there to quip, "Thank God it's Thursday."

From a broader perspective, high oil prices are reviving the sort of innovative thinking that made America great. T. Boone Pickens, CEO of BP Capital and a wealthy Texas oilman, plans to promote the building of windmills throughout the nation's wind-swept Heartland. He expects the project to generate enough electricity to make it unnecessary for power plants to burn natural gas.

He rightly says the country's "growing dependence on foreign oil - it's extreme, it's dangerous, and it threatens the future of our nation."

The reverse is also true. Finding ways to burn less oil brightens the nation's future. Folks who are leading the way deserve to be called patriots.

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