Gas prices are getting ridiculous and I don’t think it’s going to get any lower soon. The thing is do people actually drive less? People tell me they’ll drive less or find alternative forms of transportation, but when it comes down to it, I don’t think they do and besides there’s only so much you can do to conserve gas. Sure you could car pool or ride bikes if it’s close enough, but chances are people are going to drive to work and a lot of the time it’s just one person in the car. People aren’t going to stop going to work no matter what the price of gas.It’s funny. I read this article on MSN, “What if gas cost $10 a gallon?” and yeah it would cost a lot and a ton of people would be affected, but I still think people would be willing to pay that much. It seems to me it almost doesn’t matter how much gas costs. When gas was below $2.00 a gallon I think people drove a certain amount and now that it’s almost $5.00 I don’t think people drive any less.
Whenever I’m in LA I think about how bad the traffic is on the 405. It’s always what I like to call “one body one car” where I look around and it seems like no one believes in car pooling. Maybe I over-exaggerate it, but when I’m always stuck in traffic, which is whenever I drive that freeway, I look around and I only see a single body in the car. I can’t really complain about it either since when I do drive down there it’s usually only me in the car. I just don’t think that situation would change no matter how much gas costs.
I guess I’m just like everyone else though. I live away from a lot of things and if I have to drive to client locations I’m usually driving by myself. I just drive normal cars not hybrids. I do try to ride BART whenever I need to travel to SF, but I still need to drive to the nearest BART station which is about 15 miles away. Since I moved most of my friends are out of the area so carpooling isn’t really an option unless I make new friends. The only thing that conserves gas is that I have the luxury of working from home. Not having to commute saves a lot of gas money, but I do drive a lot for other things in my life .
With me, I don’t think my lifestyle would change too much if gas were more than it is now. It would have to be quite a bit more before I would stop driving or change my driving habits. I wouldn’t mind if gas went down considerably in price though. Until then I’ll keep filling up so I can keep going where I need to go.
