Tuesday, May 13, 2008 Kabasares: Life at $4 per gallon By Cris D. Kabasares
SAN FRANCISCO, California -- A three-column story in the San Francisco Chronicle greeted me a day after coming home from Europe.
Gas hits $4 per gallon! It wasn't going to stay put up there, the Chron reported. It wasn't anywhere near the crest, either -- it's bound to run high to $7.00 per gallon in time, the news added.
Other speculations were audacious. The price of gas would peak at $10!
While filling up, I winced at how incredibly fast the pump gulped my dollars. A few days ago in Europe, I felt it shriveled against the robust euro, its premier rival in the global economy.
As if this wasn't bad enough, the next day the price of rice literally zoomed. A 50-pound sack of the top quality Thai jasmine rice, that's so important to Asian cuisines and palate, was selling at $40, up from $20 a few days earlier.
Rice! That would be another interesting piece.
This time I'd stick to gas. It's readily available -- mind you -- but it costs more.
In 1973 when gas was short, a gallon was 38 cents, but you have to line up for it at the pumps. It was the first gas shortage in the US since World War II when motor fuel was rationed. It was an upshot of what is now known, historically, as the "Mideast Oil Crisis."
On October 5, 1973, on Yum Kippur, the holiest day in Jewish tradition, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel.
Other Arab nations rallied behind the invaders by supplying them with weapons and funds. The US aided Israel. In reprisal, Saudi Arabia declared an oil embargo at the US and other western nations.
The backlash was swift! In a week's time gas queues materialized around city blocks in the US and became familiar sights for sometime.
One morning at around 4 a.m., I joined the creeping column of vehicles that was heading to the Chevron gas station on the corner of Claremont and Ulloa streets, the closest to our West Portal Avenue neighborhood where I live.
I was going to gas up my wife's car. The line had already looped around three blocks when I got into it.
But half a block away from the station an attendant came waving a placard with a badly scrawled “station close, will open at 9 a.m.”
I heard groans! Expletives, too.
At that time I was commuting to my work place by light railway vehicle (LRV).
Some 737,287 who live outside the city came to work and did business here everyday.
They commuted by cars, trains, ferryboats, and buses from all over the Bay Area -- which radically pushed this city's daytime population to a sizeable 1.2 million.
San Francisco has a population of 764,976 and is part of the larger Bay Area that has a combined population of 7.2 million.
Although I didn't drive to work, the long gas lines of 1973 did not spare me.
I had to gas up my wife's car and our two other vehicles.
One time I lined up immediately following the car driven by former Manila Mayor Antonio J. Villegas. We exchanged greetings over the din of idling engines. Like me, he was filling up his wife's (Lydia) car. The Villegases at that time were living in the classy Hillsborough, (the 10th richest town in the US) an incorporated town 20 kilometers south of San Francisco.
They moved to Reno, Nevada, sometime later where the former Manila mayor died in the mid-80s.
Researcher-writer Ronald Cooke tells us that if you commute to work by public transportation, you're part of only five percent of some 135 million ( 2007 figures) who go to work by means of public transportation.
If you drive to work alone, you belong to the 74 per cent of that number (135 million) with an average driving time of 25 minutes.
Cooke adds: "Ten million Americans drive to work an hour or more everyday.
They're the group that most likely encounters frustrating freeway gridlocks."
If you carpool, you're in the company of 12 per cent that uses this mode of commuting with three or more people, in some cases, suffering from each other's attitude and poor choice of cologne. But it doesn't mean you're off the hook from the problems associated with road congestions.
Of the 135 million, only three percent walk to work, and a tiny one percent ride a bicycle or motorcycle.
Americans built their sprawling cities with the car in mind, it really seems. Los Angeles, where a car is a must, is the model of such thinking.
Today, a typical American family owns an average of two to three cars, most surveys find.
Owning a car is a necessity. More than ownership, it mirrors his passion for independence, love of the outdoors and proclivity for quick movement.
It's profoundly personal, real, and powerful, like his gas-guzzling SUVs. Take it away and he's lost, confused, and irritable.
A survey done by a local TV station reports 40 percent responded they would willingly slash other expenses, including prescription drugs, rather than limit their driving. The 60 per cent say they're not doing anything yet to cut down the use of their vehicles.
When parking in downtown became increasingly hard to find and expensive, too, many San Franciscans drove to shop in neighboring Daly City or So. San Francisco where parking is plentiful.
With the high price of gas, driving to these suburban cities would easily cost between $10 to $15, TV analysts say.
Thanks to this city's mass transit system, the Muni, downtown San Francisco seems to be the near perfect place to shop.
It costs only $1.50 to ride the Muni buses and LRVs and the ticket is good for two hours to any point in the city. Downtown is only 15 minutes by LRV from our place.
Surprisingly, only a few are finding their way back to downtown in buses and LRVs (light railway vehicle), people here are not rushing to change their ways of commuting in order to save on gas.
During the 1973 gas crunch there were suggestions for motorists to leave their cars at home and take public transportation to work for only two days a week.
It would greatly alleviate the problem, it was widely believed.
But most people refused to adjust their habit, they've come a long way to enjoy personal freedom and unlimited mobility, they argued.
Driving is fun, and ought to be guilt free, they say. They'll pay the price for it.
(Cris D. Kabasares writes a column for a New York newspaper.)
