Musings from the Interstate

My best friend, my youngest son's girlfriend, and I drove from Virginia to Georgia last weekend to attend his graduation from Army Infantry training. As we were tooling along the highway a couple of things occurred to me. This is just one:


We went through Atlanta, GA during evening rush hour. Like many cities, there is a high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane. This one is HOV 2+, meaning you have to have at least two people in the vehicle to ride in the lane.

On the return trip we came through Charlotte, NC... during Friday evening rush hour... on a race weekend. Can you say traffic jam??? Charlotte also has an HOV lane.

In both cities, the HOV lane was moving much faster than the other lanes. Needless to say we were all about being in the "fast" lane.

Here's the rub....

Nearly every car we passed had just one person in it.

A huge number were SUVs. Most had the windows rolled up, probably running air conditioning. All sitting in traffic twice as long, for the priviledge of riding alone.

The MARTA public transit train passed us in Atlanta. Moving fast, but not nearly full.

The day before we left, there was supposed to be a nationwide "gas out", to force down gas prices. It spawned a great deal of debate around here about the effectiveness of a one-day boycott and the principle of supply and demand.

What it boils down to is the general population "demands" a cheap "supply". And apparently our resolve will last about 24 hours. After that we're not willing to take any action to use less gas.

We do not want to carpool.

We do not want to use public transportation.

We sure as heck don't want to drive less, or drive more fuel efficient cars.

If we were to do just one of those things, fuel consumption would go down. Demand would go down. Perhaps the price per gallon would even go down. (It worked in the 70's)

Even if prices didn't go down, our personal fuel expense would drop.

Like most people, I am occasionally guilty of running to the store for one little thing. (Sadly, we also tend to buy several other things on impulse while we're there, but that's for another day). But we cannot jump in our $60,000 hybrid SUV, drive to the market for a tomato, then complain about gas prices.

Thom and I will stop by the store on our way home from work. In our '85 Honda with the windows rolled down.

I'll complain about gas prices, but I'll know I'm doing a little more to minimize my consumption of it. That's good for my pocketbook and the environment.

And my peace of mind.