Mass transit to ease our oil woes?

There is a torrent of news flying around the country about high gas prices. One facet of this story which has received much deserved attention is the fact that drivers are now flocking to mass transit since they can’t afford to fill up at >$4/gallon. I worked with one of the GIS gurus at EDF to help illustrate this trend in a map published recently on one of our official blogs.

The results are pretty shocking. This is happening all across the country – even in places you wouldn’t expect. Here are a few of the most dramatic examples:

>40% increase in ridership in parts of South Florida

34% increase on light rail ridership in Charlotte

8% increase in Denver despite a fare hike in Jan.

So what’s next? Well, oil prices show no sign of slowing down with demand skyrocketing from growth in developing countries. We may have truly reached a turning point in our energy economy and if I had my way we would use this momentum to build a functioning transit system and wean our country off of auto-centric, oil dependent, suburban sprawl. It’s amazing also how so many quick political fixes have arisen that will essentially do nothing but delay the problem: e.g. offshore drilling, cracking down on speculation.

Indeed we can never solve the “gas price crisis” by increasing supply; the U.S. only has about 3% of the world’s oil reserves (only 1/5 of that is off-shore) so increasing production here won’t make any difference whatsoever in the global supply-demand balance that dictates gas prices. What we really need to do is decrease our oil demand by transitioning to an economy that is not so dependent on it. Supporting mass transit is one of the best ways I can think of to do that. The solutions aren't even that hard -- bus rapid transit for example is relatively cheap compared to rail infrastructure. But it will require some initial investment that has been sorely lacking as we continue to pour money into new highway construction.

In fact many major transit authorities are suffering from the poor economy and are in major budget crises. Without major help from the government many of them could be on the verge of collapse. There is a bill that just passed the house and will now move to the senate that could inject some emergency funding into transit systems nationwide – that may be our best hope in this administration.

This isn't just an issue about oil and energy either. Mass transit addresses social inequities by giving all communities cheaper, better access to jobs and economic opportunities.