Oil Economics and Working Motherhood

The headline all over the news has been the rising gaspump prices and oil hitting $75/barrel. Yeah, it kinda sucks. But do I really care personally at the "kitchen table" level? Not so much. I feel badly for the cabbies and truckers and struggling workers with older inefficient cars who are really taking a hit, and the broader economic implications, but I can't help but be a little smug at the Hummer drivers interviewed on TV at the gas stations who moved to the way outer suburbs and complain about it taking a few hundred bucks to fill their SUV to commute from their McMansion development near West Virginia to their city jobs. Ok, that is a little crass, and no offense intended to residents of the outer suburbs, but really, if you live far away from your job to buy a cheaper house, than you have to factor in the added commuting costs of an "extreme commute", and a gas-guzzler might not be the best choice.

We are lucky to live very close to our jobs. Our entire lives (mostly) are within a 3 mile radius of the house--both our jobs, daycare, one set of grandparents, stores, restaurants, doctors, libraries, parks, Metro, etc-- so we are just personally not into the commuting lifestyle. Sure we really want a bigger house with a yard, but we love the neighborhood we live in and the city I grew up in, and I love the fact that if I have to or want to, I can walk/bus/bike almost everywhere. Time and weather permitting, we do try to walk to the library or grocery store or custard shop or my parents' house.

We both bus to work, so my car gets driven maybe twice a week and I usually only go through a tank of gas per month. Our primary car is our Toyota Highlander Hybrid (HiHy), which gets sedan gas mileage for SUV space (which we need for roadtrips and carpooling), and racks up the miles faster because of family outings and long vacation drives, but also doesn't burn through as much gas or create as much pollution as a regular SUV or minivan. I haven't done the math, but the increase in gas prices is having a fairly minimal impact on our budget, and now that the weather is nice, we will be walking more anyway.

90% of the time we could easily be a one-car family. But, that other 10% of schedule conflicts would just be too inconvenient to be stranded. We know two families with little ones who are or were single-car families by choice, partly for environmental reasons. It is an admirable choice, and takes some effort and planning at times, but is possible by living so close to everything and making a conscientious choice to limit driving. On another end of the spectrum (almost full-circle), we know someone who commutes every day almost 100 miles each way, and drives a hybrid car, but not for environmental reasons. He is very politically conservative, and he is very much into energy efficiency from the perspective of not wanting to support foreign governments in OPEC he objects to.

I hope the silver lining of such high gas prices is average people really start considering transportation and energy consumption seriously, with more willingness to invest in mass transit and pedestrian/bike-friendly streets, and willingness to re-evaluate choices in cars, commutes, and lifestyles. It's not just about some hippie environmentalist agenda, it's about being able to breathe outside and having a life outside of the car and the implications of dependence on non-renewable energy sources controlled by foreign interests.

So where was I going with this, you wonder?
The 25 April Washington Post had a very interesting juxtaposition of front-page articles: "Cost of Gas Puts Pressure on GOP" and "Ties to Far-Flung Homes Drives Commuters Great Lengths." Take a look at the articles, but to summarize, there aren't any short-term policy solutions to the high gas prices, and there are lots of people (especially blue-collar) living 100 miles away and commuting to the DC area because there are no jobs near their hometowns, and many DC employers have to subsidize vanpools to defray the commuting costs (oversimplified, but you get the idea).

We choose to live near the city in a walkable and mass-transit accessible neighborhood. Yes, our cost of living is higher as far as house size and land. But, we can afford to live where we do because I work, and because we chose to live near everything in our lives and drive efficient vehicles, we can save on gas and have a very energy-efficient townhouse. It sort of goes back to the "Golden Handcuffs" debate, but we've decided this is the environment in which we want to raise Eli, and right now that takes two incomes. Maybe we don't have a McMansion on a half-acre on what was once farmland that we never see because we are sitting in traffic during daylight hours, but we do have our own townhouse (on what was once a crackhouse) adjacent to a big park and near everything we'd ever want to drive to...but we can walk.

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