Americans are making fewer summer trips by car and driving fewer miles for the first time in decades. Summer driving has dropped steadily every year, according to AAA, and the Transportation Department reported last week that in March of 2008, U.S. drivers logged 11 billion fewer miles than in March of 2007, a 4.3% decline. Not since 1979 has traffic dropped from one March to the next; not since 1942 has traffic seen such a significant decline, month-on-month. The demand for gas has also fallen, for the first time in 17 years.

As gas prices skyrocket, Americans are adjusting their commutes. From the NYT:

Hating every minute of it, Americans are slowly learning to live with high gasoline prices. For a nation accustomed to cheap fuel, big vehicles and sprawling suburbs, the adjustments are wrenching.

Cory Asmus of Temecula, Calif., just bought a $4,800 motorcycle for his 20-mile drive to work so he could cut his gas bill to $8 a week, from $110.

 

Florian Bialas, a retiree who lives near Chicago, sold his Pontiac Sunfire for $3,000 and plans to give up his license when it expires in September. “I can walk to most places where I need to go,” he said.

 

And Debbie Gloyd of Cleveland has parked her Chrysler Concorde and started taking the bus to work. “I can’t afford these gas prices,” she said. “They’re insane.”

Experts predict that cutting down on car travel is more than a temporary fix or a side effect of a fizzling economy. The changes Americans are making now will likely endure and, with luck, will reduce our overall dependence on fuel—and motivate us to find more ecological alternatives.

Lee Schipper, a visiting scholar at the transportation center of the University of California, Berkeley, called the changes in gas prices and consumer habits a “wake-up call.” He told the NYT, “We actually have a lot of choices, based on what car we drive, where we live, how much time we choose to drive, and where we choose to go. But you have built in a very strong car dependency. And when the price hits the fan, people have a hard time coping.”

Photos via flickr by Nat and jonk.

General Motors and Chrysler are taking the nation's concerns over rising gas prices and the environment to heart by offering a hybrid option in their biggest SUVs. The companies' 5,500-pound eight-seater SUVs can now come with big hybrid badges, a slightly less obnoxiously consumptive engine, and a significantly higher price tag.

G.M.'s four-wheel drive Tahoe hybrid model gets 20 mpg, up from 14 with the conventional engine. The price tag? $53,000! - a hike of $4,000.

SUV sales have been way down – by about 50% since 2007 according to the R.L. Polk research firm. Not surprisingly, the new gigantic hybrids aren't the answer most people are looking for. G.M.'s hybrid SUV sales are way below their targets. The national trend is towards smaller, more efficient vehicles. Toyota's Prius now ranks as the 9th best selling model in the nation. Even better – people are decreasing car use and walking, using mass transit, and biking more.

As gas prices rise, business is down for American automakers. Sales of the most notorious gas-guzzlers, like pickups and S.U.V.s, have fallen significantly, reports Ford. In 2007, pickups accounted for 14 percent of sales to the U.S. market. Presently, they represent a mere nine percent.

Following a brash promise that they’d deliver a full-year profit for 2009, Ford has rescinded their claim. Currently, the industry giant is preparing for impending doom: it’s drastically scaling back production and stepping up cost-cutting.

Alan R. Mullaly, Ford’s chief executive, said the change appears to be more than a brief reaction to rising gas prices. Instead, the trend could indicate a more permanent downshifting in America’s addiction to cars. According to Ford, the industry demand for cars and trucks is dropping to its lowest point in more than a decade.

Souce: The New York Times

Photos via flickr by bitzcelt and mcbeth.

With few exceptions, television is almost as ubiquitous and deadening as driving a car. One program, however, has my seal of approval. The show, Perils for Pedestrians, is a monthly series trying to spread the good word for pedestrians and make drivers more aware of their presence on the roads.

Hosted by resident expert John Z. Wetmore, the program advocates for pedestrian safety and addresses ped-related concerns, such as the absence of “sidewalks and crosswalks, dangerous intersections, speeding traffic, and obstacles to wheelchair users and people with disabilities; and solutions to such problems.”

The show is syndicated nation-wide on local cable stations (rig up your black box for reception). You can also watch via Google Video. If you’re assuming the program is deadly boring, don’t throw it under the bus just yet. A recent broadcast opens with these startling stats: “In the U.S. over the last decade, 60 thousand pedestrians died under the wheels of an automobile. 1 million pedestrians were injured.” That’s enough to keep you up at night—or, at the very least, alert in the crosswalk.

I’ve long been a sucker for the comics, which I never quite outgrew. Thanks to artists like Lynda Barry, Dan Clowes, Marjane Satrapi, and Art Spiegelman, who helped give the graphic novel staying power, it’s still cool to be a comics freak well beyond your adolescence. This week, I discovered a strip that indulges my interest in dark, irreverent comics as well as my pro-pedestrian inclinations: Jason Turner’s Walk to Work.

Each of Turner’s short strips is a story about his pedestrian journey to work—and the strange sights he encounters en route. There’s a naked guy; a guy in a red shirt; a disappearing puddle of vomit; and a brilliant game. He makes unsettling eye contact with an eagle, and converses with a crow near a polluted river (“the river is heavy with death”). In this and many of the strips, Turner even tackles “the idea of green.” (In this particular strip, he consults a shrub that’s subject to exhaust fumes all day long.)

However strange Turner’s tales, his comics celebrate the joys of walking to work: awareness, observation, and intriguing sights. Walking engages your creativity and your senses, and keeps you in touch with your surroundings. Trapped inside of a steel box, I’m sure, Turner hardly notice—or savor—any of these oddities.

Image by Jason Turner.

Despite Amsterdam’s claim that it’s the bike capital of Europe, there’s another Dutch city that has it beat. In the northern city of Groningen, the Netherlands' sixth-largest city, 57 percent of all journeys are made by bike (versus Amsterdam, which holds its own at 40 percent of all journeys).

Groningen has long held a reputation for its bike-friendly ways. In 2006, it was named the world’s best cycling city by Bicycling magazine. Cyclists ride on demarcated bike paths along the roadside and take precedence over drivers. To encourage more bike and pedestrian travel, the city is divided into four different sectors; if drivers want to cross from one to another sector, they cannot simply drive there. Instead, they’re required to drive around the entire city until they arrive at the sector’s entry point. This requirement may sound both superfluous and silly, but it helps keep car traffic to a minimum. Bikes, of course, are free to travel throughout the sectors as they wish.

Groningen boasts 3000 bike parking spots at its rail station and a former nuclear bomb shelter beneath its city hall has been converted into a bike garage.

Source: The Age

Photo via flickr by evert-jan van.