This headline is just too precious:
Suburbs aren’t a wasteland — they even have brie out here
Bless your cotton socks, sweetheart. You mean they have cheese in Bellevue? Really? Really? I would never have guessed that cheese- expensive cheese- could have made it over the I-90 bridge. Simply amazing.
Child care, not soaring fuel costs, led to my recent, brief stint telecommuting, and the experiment was rewarding from a financial, parenting and policy standpoint.
Good news: I saved a half tank of gas!
Bad news: Reports of the demise of the automobile are greatly exaggerated.
I have discovered my car, my suburban lifestyle and I can coexist.
Good for you. Do you want a medal? (And who exactly is saying the automobile is dead? Lynne doesn’t let on. From seeing the run on Prius’, my only guess is that the automobile she’s referring to is the H2 or Frank Blethen’s ride, the Porsche Cayenne.)
That’s likely to be disappointing news to many. The New York Times recently published essays from writers expressing the national angst over skyrocketing gas prices. The mood was funereal.
One was titled “Goodbye to the Great American Road Trip,” and needs no further explanation. “Ghosts of the Cul-de-sac” announced, a tad gleefully, a mass exodus from the suburbs and exurbs as people escape their cars for city living.
The difference between our area and many areas of the country is that Seattle has held up much better than lots of other markets. Big subdivisions outside D.C. are vacant, and the Las Vegas exurbs are imploding just as quickly as they were built.
Blog postings on the subject ranged from expressions of schadenfreude to something more venal. Suburbanites are stereotyped as gas guzzlers commuting to McMansions, the values of which are dropping like granite countertops. One poster predicted rising gas prices will scatter suburbanites like rodents. OK, I like cheese — particularly soft brie — but comparing us to rats? Not as bad, however, as the poster who crowed that the rise of gas prices was for commuters, “the chickens coming home to roost.”
There’s something to be said for folks living with the decisions they’ve made. You know, free markets and what not.
I get the fear and pessimism. We’re all reeling, and relief is not forthcoming. The World Petroleum Congress is meeting this week in Madrid, Spain. But the Saudis and other OPEC oil ministers are more likely to concur on the best tapas than agree to lower the price of crude oil.
Lynne’s idea of relief is cheaper gas for people who don’t want to change their behavior. Totally off the table is relief in the form of driving less. That’s Commie bullshit!
Barring a change in price, we’re going to have to change the level of demand. It has already started. Cruising is down, making the drive along West Seattle’s Alki Beach doable in less than two hours. Farther from home, driving on empty is up. AAA reports a 7 percent increase in calls from Southern California motorists running out of gas.
How are people lowering demand? By cruising less, and by being irresponsibly driving around on empty. Amazing sacrifices, America. Simply amazing. I want every one of our boys currently holed up in Tikrit and Karbala to know that we’re doing our part.
Yet, the rise-and-fall-of-the-suburbs-type prognostications march on unchallenged. But jumping on the for-sale signs littering the landscape as symbolic of an American shift to living next door to work is premature. Right now, empty houses are more about the subprime-mortgage fallout than gas mileage.
Uh, ok. Then riddle me this one, Lynne: Why are housing prices stable in transit-oriented development? I saw plenty of “For Sale: Price Reduced” signs in Kent’s East Hill, but not so many in SE Seattle, where light rail is coming in 2009.
The urge to blame someone — who better than affluent suburbanites and their cars? — is understandable, but a waste. Smart public policy will fail if its relies on emotional attempts to lure people back to the city or offer a bike for every garage.
I agree with Lynne. I’m all for guilt-trip reduction. Let’s add buses and build more rail out to the ‘burbs. Telling someone to ride Metro for the sake of the polar bears is bullshit, and will never work. People will only ditch their cars if the train gets them to work faster than driving.
Better solutions are to continue efforts belatedly launched around telecommuting, fuel-efficient vehicle standards and increasing funding for public transit.
Of course we should have seen this coming, whether we live in the city or a rural hamlet. Demand for fuel-efficient cars has resonance now, but Congress and Detroit automakers made sure we were slow getting to this point.
There are fewer American institutions that move slower than Detroit’s car industry. Toyota is eating GM’s lunch on hybrid technology, while Honda is releasing (to a few hundred handpicked customers) a car than runs on hydrogen.
Now we’ll have to dig into our collective pockets to pay for light rail, buses and additional lanes on our highways.
Uh, ok. Two out of three ain’t bad. Demand is way up on Metro and Sound Transit, that’s for sure. But more highway miles? Really? As gas prices rise steadily year after year, I wonder why we would want to invest billions in a product that’s losing it’s market share.
The need is dire. State transportation officials often present worse-case scenarios to get our attention, but one prediction is untenable at the lowest and highest ends. By 2030, the portion of Interstate 90 running through Issaquah will slow to 30 miles per hour as a rising population runs into stagnant road planning. Traffic is expected to increase from 43 percent to 72 percent in this area.
Similar predictions can be made about roadways from Mercer Street in Seattle to Route 202 on the Eastside. In the languid days of summer, it is easy to agree our problems will be eased by getting out of our cars, selling our homes for close-in condos or simply busing ourselves across Lake Washington. When the water sparkles like clear gems, as it has the last few days, I, too, am vulnerable to such fantasy.
You mean, if we do nothing for twenty years, I-90 will be jammed on the freeway through Issaquah? (Isn’t I-90 already jammed through Issaquah?) Yeah, like I trust the highway-building clowns who got us into this mess to get us out of it.
But it’s nice to read that Lynne’s thinking outside the box by maybe, just maybe, taking personal responsibility for her commute.
Then I snap out of it.
Nevermind.
The suburbs aren’t dead.
Lynne Varner 1, Strawman 0.
They’re more vibrant than ever. Technology has pushed the work-at-home concept and large employers such as Microsoft have turned the burbs into employment centers.
That must be why Microsoft hired a fleet of buses and vans to get their employees to and form work… because they’re all telecommuting. Right.
City dwellers aren’t the only ones interested in doing errands on foot. Planning for suburban communities includes retail, employment and entertainment options that operate as mini-Seattles.
Good for you. Want another medal? The Distinguished Cross for Stating The Obvious?
More creativity, less blame, can give us four-day work weeks, telecommutes and a viable school option across the street rather than across town.
Less blame, absolutely. Don’t blame me for laughing at you when you’re stuck in traffic, burning seven dollar Saudi vintage, when I’m not, all because you don’t want to change your behavior, ever.
Gas-guzzling suburbanites and sweaty bicycle-riding urbanites unite!
I prefer a policy of detente, but any move by you towards a rational, evidence-based transportation policy will be welcomed.
“But the Saudis and other OPEC oil ministers are more likely to concur on the best tapas than agree to lower the price of crude oil.”
Lynne is not the only American who assumes OPEC and the Suadis can “lower the price of crude oil.” But what if they can’t? What if the Saudis have been lying about how much oil they have, and their ability to boost production to meet rising demand? What if market forces, not production quotas, are setting prices now, and control over oil pricing has slipped beyond anyone’s grasp?
Roger Rabbit Quiz
In what month and year was the most oil produced in history?
[ ] 1. July 1897
[ ] 2. May 2005
[ ] 3. October 2006
[ ] 4. August 2007
[ ] 5. June 2008
Hint: 4 of these answers are throwaways.
What a lot of people still don’t get is that $4.50 isn’t gas prices’ final destination, but only a waypoint on the way up.
Last week, a Wall Street oil analyst told us to expect $7 within 2 years. If recent history is a guide, we’ll get there in 6 months.
Crude is still going up and reached $146 today; my guess is it’ll blow through $150 next week.
“There are fewer American institutions that move slower than Detroit’s car industry.”
I can think of one: The Bush administration.
Uhhh…great job, guys. Trying to persuade someone to change their point of view with a condescending diatribe telling them they’re idiots and that everything about the way they live is eeeevil.
If I were an Eastsider and read this, it’d make me more inclined to vote for McSame, Dino and Sheriff Dave. After raising my middle finger at y’all–and having another nibble or two of brie.
I thought it was the speculators who were pushing the price up, a la Enron.
There is plenty of oil, its the refining capacity, plus the US’s bellicose stance toward the region where most of the oil lies that is allowing the speculators to claim ‘market forces’ and get crazy rich.
I personally think we should build our transportation planning around the assumption that gas will cost $10 a gallon and only the elite will be able to afford car commuting.
The suburbs also have jobs. I have one of those. It’s a 2.5 mile bike ride to work and I pass a grocery store on my way to work.
Within a 5 mile radius of my house I have a Costco, a megaplex movie theater, coffee shops, bars, a library, 4 grocery stores and of course my job. When I do drive I get 28 MPG city. And as the price of food goes up I’ve got plenty of yard that would convert nicely to garden.
I can’t speak for everyone or every suburb, but I think I’ll be just fine.
It all comes down to vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for you and the stuff you need. You can live in a city with great transit options and still lead a high VMT lifestyle or you can live in the ‘burbs and lead a low VMT lifestyle.
I saw in my morning paper that some car dealerships no longer take SUV’s as trade in vehicles. Maybe the gov’ment should start a buy-back program on gas guzzlers.
We could melt them down and turn them into bicycles!
Michael # 9: A couple of weekends ago I was helping my son shop for a new car. His old Subaru was totaled by a drunk driver.
I was surprised at all the activity at the Honda dealership – the sales people were all trying to handle more than one set of customers at a time. It seems lots of people were trying to trade in their big cars for something more gas efficient. Looking at my old Ford Explorer, he solomly advised me that his sales manager had just informed them that morning that they could no longer take V-8’s in trade – they couldn’t get rid of the ones they had on the lot. (I wasn’t going to trade in anyway, and it’s a V-6, not a V-8).
One of the interesting things was that the Honda Accord has it’s economy edition with a 4-cylnder engine. If you want a moon roof, leather seats, upgraded sound system, etc. you have to go to a higher-value V-6. But there were lots of V-6 Accords on the lot, and not many 4-cylanders. I’m betting that by now, you could pick up the V-6 for the price of a 4-cylander, even with all the other features.
i live and work in blahvue and rode my bike to work today. i iz sweaty. can i haz brie nao?
6. t4toby spews:
I thought it was the speculators who were pushing the price up, a la Enron.
There is plenty of oil, its the refining capacity, plus the US’s bellicose stance toward the region where most of the oil lies that is allowing the speculators to claim ‘market forces’ and get crazy rich.
i thought it was opec, international oil cos., neoconmen, lord cheney, and king abdullah keeping with the opec quota down by making sure iraq does not pump much oil.
Last week, a Wall Street oil analyst told us to expect $7 within 2 years. If recent history is a guide, we’ll get there in 6 months.
——————–
Wall analysts, industry (including the energy AND auto industries), and independent consultants (eg, Daniel Yergin’s Cambridge Energy Research Associates) have for the most part missed badly on the direction of oil, and I’d be wary of anyone’s projections at this point, up or down. A significant factor in oil’s rise of late has been the direction of interest rates in the EU vs. those in the US. Should those trends reverse oil could head down. Of course, this issue has several moving parts. If tensions between Israel and Iran ratchet up significantly – and that’s very possible in the coming year or two – the prices today could look mild.
@11
I don’t live in King County, I’m lactose intolerant and it would take a lot more than a 2.5 mile ride at 10MPH to make me sweaty.
@6 “I thought it was the speculators who were pushing the price up, a la Enron. There is plenty of oil, its the refining capacity …”
You are dead wrong. Oil prices are spiking because global production has hit a wall while global demand continues going up. That has nothing to do with domestic refining capacity, which by the way has been steadily increasing since the early 1990s.
She sure is living in denial. Wonder if Marie Antoinette was as clueless? And Will was amazingly snarky. Woke up on the cranky side of the bed this morning?
Really, you all need to calm down. Economic forces will make those people come around eventually. There is no need to gloat and poke them with sticks as they start to ride the bus in desperation.
@13 “A significant factor in oil’s rise of late has been the direction of interest rates in the EU vs. those in the US.”
Well, yes. The U.S. has kept domestic interest rates artificially low for years now, and it’s exerting a large downward effect on the purchasing power of the dollar.
“Should those trends reverse oil could head down.”
Well, no, because the main factors driving up oil prices — supply constraints, growing demand, and the export of U.S. jobs and wealth to China — are irreversible.
“Of course, this issue has several moving parts.”
Well, yes. We’ve sent our jobs to China and borrowed $1.2 trillion from them. That means they get a larger share of global oil supplies, and we get less.
7. Roger Rabbit spews:
I personally think we should build our transportation planning around the assumption that gas will cost $10 a gallon and only the elite will be able to afford car commuting
Uh. No. We had better drill more, drill now and drill a whole lot, or our petrol-oriented society is gonna come crashing down around the demo’s ears. (They’re the ones who have got us into this mess, all by their lonesome, with their whacko leftist hate-America, hate prosperity, hate freedom and democracy attitude).
Think BA. Several million fewer flyers every day is gonna bring the economy (what’s left of it since Jan, 2007, the day the demos took control of Congress) to an absolute stop.
Won’t need no train to go to a job that doesn’t exist. Won’t have no job to pay the taxes to pay for the train that won’t be in 99% of folks’ neighborhoods anyways.
Auto dealers, auto repair, UPS, Fed-Ex, HELL! EVERY AND ANY F**KING STORE IN THE WORLD: No ONE will have the $$$ to pay for anything. There will be no groceries ’cause no one will be able to afford to plant, grow, harvest or deliver! Meat, poultry, fish, grain, IT WON’T MATTER!!!
DRILL NOW!
DRILL MORE!
DRILL OR DIE!
“People will only ditch their cars if the train gets them to work faster than driving.” Way to go Will. I have been saying that since oil was $60 per barrel…..
Time saved will make people change faster than $$$ unfortunately. The people who can afford it will still burn gas in their 10 mpg rigs.
The folks that can’t afford gas will just suffer. As always. Exxon, suffer, not so much…..
cmiklich, let’s just put everyone to work building electric cars, and windmills. Don’t need to spend 3 trillion occupying Montana…..
I know, I know. Exxon’ profits are far more important than what is good for Americans. Just ask Bush/Cheney.
Just remember. One of the first things Ronnie Ray Gun did after taking office was to take them damn solar panels off the roof of the White House.
Putting Republicons in charge of our energy is like putting a junkie in charge of the pharmacy.
By the way, treating the cancers, and other illnesses caused by automobile exhaust adds $4 to $10 per gallon to the pump price. We just pay for it somewhere else. There is still very little known about the long term damage air pollution does to our genetics, or children. We do know that at birth a baby has over 200 un-natural chemicals in their body, and no one knows how these affect them.
Back to price. Now add the cost of the military “guarding” our supplies, and then the hard to quantify environmental costs.
Gas is $20 per gallon plus, in reality. Possibly $30 per gallon. We just don’t pay it at the pump. It goes to defense contractors, PHARMA, HMO’s, and morticians.
The whole of society worldwide is subsidizing the oil companies.
Had enough?
21. All Facts Support My Positions spews:
By the way, treating the cancers, and other illnesses caused by automobile exhaust adds $4 to $10 per gallon to the pump price. We just pay for it somewhere else. There is still very little known about the long term damage air pollution does to our genetics, or children.
Right. Sure. You betcha! That’s why folks live to be 80 YEARS OLD ON AVERAGE in this country. ‘Cause the air is soooooo bad. (Think about it: One kid getting killed by a pedophilic democrat @ 12 y.o. means 9 seniors must live to 88 to make up for her.)
Un-natural chemicals? What is an un-natural chemical? They don’t just magically appear from thin air. They are ALL MADE WITH THE CONTENTS of this little ball in space.
$20, $30 per gallon? You sound like RFK, Jr with his $2 trillion subsidy statement (except the Fed gov’t only collects $2.7 trillion in taxes. Total.). Just throw a number out there and it’ll grow legs.
Exxon Mobil paid nearly $30 BILLION in Income tax last year against $172 Billion gross profit. That’s a fair chunk of change. In other words, XOM paid more in Federal taxes last year THAN ALL THE Taxes of ALL OF THE CITIZENS of the State of WA paid into OUR State. And, that doesn’t begin to cover their cost of doing business, or State taxes, or anything else they pay.
We NEED to DRILL!
We MUST DRILL!
Drill, drill, drill. You sound like a crack head saying, more, more more!
Ever heard of peak oil?
Well, no, because the main factors driving up oil prices — supply constraints, growing demand, and the export of U.S. jobs and wealth to China — are irreversible.
————————
Well, yes. If there’s a global recession that causes tremendous demand destruction oil could head down rapidly. Whether it stays there is another matter altogether. If economies find substitute sources of energy over time and innovate with new or more efficient technology oil demand could be reduced substantially. US transportation consumes roughly 1 out of 8 barrels of oil produced. Increasing auto mileage by 30 or 50 percent could reduce this need by millions of barrels of oil per day.
There’s a bright side to high oil prices, and that is that it forces us to innovate.
@24
I’ve been noticing that drivers have been behaving much friendlier towards cyclists since gas passed $4 a gallon.
I’d say that Michael and Roger are both right. When has there ever been a crisis that there hasn’t been a legion of sleazebags ready and waiting to exploit it?
No, children, the price of gas (or most anything else) isn’t going to go down, at least not by much. What may happen is that in a few years the economy in general will recover from the beating it’s taken and (particularly if the CHEAP LABOR CONSERVATIVES are no longer in control) wages will rise to compensate. However, it’s also likely that the cost of transportation will remain higher as a percentage of the average person’s income than it’s been heretofore.
Over the next several decades, this will cause people to adjust their lifestyles to adapt to necessity. Most of us don’t buy a new house or go look for a new job every day (in spite of the mass media’s ridiculous attempts to tell us we should) and over time people will choose to live closer to where they work and play.
And Michael is right…there are jobs in the ‘burbs, just as there are houses in Seattle. If a bunch of the folks who live in Bellevue would take the jobs there, and Seattle-dwellers would choose to work in the city (instead of what I’m doing–mea culpa, mea culpa) we could just scuttle the 520 bridge instead of replacing it.
cmiklich can be counted on to repeat the same mindless garbage each time he logs on to HA.
One would think a big/small ego conservative would hold on to at least a thread of self-respect.
It was his idiotic ideology which rewarded American auto manufacturers for manufacturing the American family’s “need” for “safe” SUVs once they took the reigns of power in ’94.
Clowns like cmiklich were cheering them off the cliff, and mocking Toyota and Honda for their “wimpy” cars. Thanks, in part, to the always-backwards conservative “vision” GM and Ford are looking at another 30% nosedive in sales, and are literally paying people (suckers) to remove the Gingrich legacy rolling stock off their lots.
cmiklich has this weird talent for embracing failure. He always seems so proud of his ignorance. That could be part of the whole Bob Roberts thing (or Newt, Limbaugh & W thing, where the moron right winger digs his heels in deeper each time his dumb pie-in-the-sky theories are proven wrong).
Speaking of being wrong all the time: hysterical DRILL NOW cmiklich should probably check in with ANWR and Florida oil exploration proponents. Even THEY admit domestic oil reserves won’t make a dent in the cost of gas.
Could somebody tell cmiklich that the Weekly World News…err, I mean World Net Daily, isn’t a credible source for information?
I also love how the forever-whining cmiklich uses the Dori Moronson approach: blame local taxes for massive oil company / Saudi Prince profits.
The tax subsidy for sprawl, oil addiction & pavement far surpasses any miniscule transit tax he likes to bitch about. But like any ignorant ideologue or addict, cmiklich will never admit to the root problem in the first place. In fact, his hysterical rantings indicate cmiklich is probably subconsciouly aware of the fact he’s dead wrong on just about everything.
If the poor sap was more confident in his views, he might actually tone down the victim’s complex meter, squelch the hysterics, and base an argument on solid evidence one of these days…rather than talk radio hyperbole.
But such actions could get him kicked out of the Frustrated & Angry White Guy Club. And we wouldn’t want that. Team Rove needs all the broken & defeated manchildren they can hold on to these days (outside Alabama, anyways)
Good thing I latched onto this screen name early, huh?
Somehow I have a feeling there are going to be a lot more “guys with no car” soon enough — or maybe, guys with cars they can’t drive because there’s no gas to be had.
Jeremy, yer a typical liberal. Shoot the messenger.
My daily driver is an econobox. This isn’t about “me”. I’m not worried about “me”. It’s about OUR country. Like Obama, you care NOTHING about Our country. You typical leftists want to enslave America on Independence Day.
(And, I’d bet dollars to donuts I’m way older than the average poster around here. And, since education only teaches you how to spell “experience”, I’ve got more of both than most of you on that score as well.)
There’s far, far more oil out there than just ANWR. There’s enough off the American coast to put the fear of competitive pricing into the mudlims. ANWR would provide over 5% (maybe 10%) of daily oil consumption in the U.S. Offshore? As much as 10% by some estimates. They won’t know until the leftist/hate-America first Congress says okay.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if GWB, in one of his few really conservative acts, said “F.O. Congress, this is an executive decision: Drill Now. Drill More.” 3 years and that oil would be flowing. If BJ hadn’t been so busy acting like Mike Lowry assaulting women, ANWR would be flowing by now.
BTW, Limbaugh must be some kind of success story. $400 million? Holy Sh!t.
There’s evidence that peak oil was reached in May of 2005, in answer to Roger’s question @ 2.
I’m not a liberal, cmiklich – but everything is relative… so, since you’re a right wing moonbat (the defense of Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harrassment was particularly entertaining…since when did the God, guns and bug-eyed abortion kooks start rationalizing acts of moral depravity? also see: Gingrich and Limbaugh)
I’m going to go blow stuff up right now (I figure the money I spend at Tulalip will go to “the vast liberal conspiracy) but stay tuned tomorrow, cmiklich.
It’s gonna be fun playing piñata with HA’s dumbest conservative lurker.
Btw, as an airplane mechanic who bases his hatred of rail transit on a set of total fallacies (all do) you should have tried to achieve some small measure of accuracy describing your own industry:
It’s point-to-point, not “portal to portal” And no, the airline industry never abandoned hub and spoke.
Moron.
We never would have guessed you were a dinosaur, miklich. Thanks for clue-ing us in. Really.
@26,27
Thanks Art!
Btw, as an airplane mechanic who bases his hatred of rail transit on a set of total fallacies (all do)
Wrongo, idiot! BTW, idiots rank lower than morons, so y’see, us real Americans come out on top.
Yer blown on the airplane mechanic stuff. That description hardly covers what I do. But trying to explain complex subject matter to an IDIOT is a waste of time.
Likewise, as I and the other intelligent folk have posted numerous times regarding rail: Until it can go PORTAL-TO-PORTAL like cars (and busses, virtually) it’s a boondoggle.
Until the rail car can deliver goods directly to the store, or pick up over 75% of the local population and deliver them within blocks of their destination, then rail cannot compete with roads (that’s a bus #, cars go 100%! Unsound Transit: Less than 2%.)
And Jesus Christ, Lynne: nobodyeats brie anymore…
And Jesus Christ, Lynne: nobody eats brie anymore…
Every tried to promote something good and helpful?
Nah, I didn’t think so.