Yep, that's right: American drivers are actually cutting back on
driving. High gas prices are undoubtedly one cause, but traffic
congestion is undoubtedly another big part of it. And I am definitely
seeing more people on the train station platform in the morning than I
was a year ago (the article mentions a 6% increase in Metrolink
ridership).

http://ktla.trb.com/news/ktla-drivinghabits,0,7341064.story?coll=ktla-news-1

U.S. Motorists Cut Back On Driving

By Elizabeth Douglass, Times Staff Writer

January 25, 2007, 12:38 PM PST

Two years of record-high gasoline prices have forced auto-crazed
Americans to do something they haven't done in more than two decades:
Drive less.

Auto designer Jack Chen is one of them. Pricey gas made living in
Pasadena and working in Ontario a $400-a-month grind.

"I started to reexamine my life overall," said Chen, 35, who loves
muscle cars and drives a Saab 9-2x sports wagon. "I summed up how much
I spent on gas and I started having this idea of moving inland." So
last summer, he settled into a Corona apartment and cut his commute to
seven miles.

The financial relief was immediate. Before "I had to watch my balance
to make sure checks didn't bounce," Chen said. "I don't have to worry
about that these days."

Few have made such drastic lifestyle changes. But to the surprise of
many economists, U.S. motorists changed their ways enough to cut the
nation's per-driver mileage by 0.4% in 2005, ending a string of
increases dating back to 1980, government data show.

Other reports over the last year on mass transit ridership, total
miles driven nationwide, gasoline demand, vehicle sales and retail and
restaurant spending reinforce the notion that U.S. drivers made
significant — and in some cases, lasting — adjustments to offset
steadily rising gasoline prices.

"In 2005 and into 2006, we did see consumers start to change their
driving behavior," said David Portalatin, director of industry
analysis at NPD Group Inc., which tracks consumer spending. "That's a
very hard thing to change, because I've either got to change where I
work, where I live, or what kind of car I drive in order to actually
consume less gasoline."

It's a small but important shift for a nation that many believed was
impervious to rising gas prices because drivers were unable or
unwilling to rein in their gas-guzzling ways. Lofty energy costs have
generated such concern that President Bush devoted a significant chunk
of his last two State of the Union speeches to addressing the nation's
oil addiction.

"The message is that price matters," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of
Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a Boston-area consulting company
that recently published an analysis called "Gasoline and the American
People." The study highlighted the decline in per-driver mileage and a
cooling appetite for the largest sport utility vehicles, among other
things, and concluded that expensive gasoline was transforming
"America's love affair with the automobile."

Even though pump prices have dropped substantially from their highs in
2006, "there's a greater sense of insecurity, and people don't want to
be caught emptying their wallet at the gasoline pump," said Yergin,
author of "The Prize," a Pulitzer-winning history of the oil industry.

That anxiety has shown up in California, where average gas prices
stayed above the $3 mark for more than four months last year and
triggered an unexpected dip in gasoline usage.

Through the first nine months of 2006, gasoline sales fell 0.6%
compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the state
Board of Equalization.

In car-centric Los Angeles, ridership rose more than 6% on Metrolink
trains and 5.7% on the buses and trains run by the Los Angeles
Metropolitan Transportation Authority through the first nine months of
the year.

"Usually, when gas prices go up, and then come down, ridership would
go up, then we would see it go back down, but this time we are keeping
it," MTA spokesman Jose Ubaldo said. "It's amazing."

Oil companies, however, need not fret. A steady economy, growing
population and longer commutes will keep U.S. gasoline consumption
chugging along for years, despite the uptick in sales of fuel-saving
hybrid cars and the growing use of biofuels such as ethanol.

While high prices cut into the expected growth rate, U.S. gasoline
consumption nonetheless increased by about 1% in 2006 after staying
flat the previous year. "The gasoline consumed since that August peak
in gasoline prices is up nearly 2.5% versus the comparable time period
a year ago," said Portalatin, the NPD researcher. "What it means is
that consumers have a short memory."

Retiree Joe McElroy of Fountain Valley admits to being a backslider.
When local gas costs jumped last summer, McElroy consolidated errands
and trimmed trips to visit Riverside relatives. But, he acknowledged,
"when prices eased up, I kind of relaxed on that cutback and went
ahead and did a little more driving."

That response is what economists have come to expect. Decades of
studies invariably conclude that big spikes in prices at the pumps
produce only tiny short-term cutbacks in demand. If that research is
any guide, whatever changes motorists made during the recent gas-price
spikes would be wiped out by recently plunging prices outside of
California.

But some transportation experts say that a handful of new factors are
starting to turn the tide, causing some consumption changes to stick
despite lower prices.

Some believe drivers are reacting to the increasing volatility and the
steady upward march of gasoline prices over the last few years.

After enjoying lower pump prices in 2001 and 2002, consumers saw the
yearly average cost of gas jump by double digits in each of the next
four years.

Another reason is that the nation's baby boomers are getting older,
and many are approaching retirement age. Older drivers tend to drive
less, especially if they are freed from a daily commute. Today, more
than 14% of U.S. drivers are over 65 — nearly double the level in
1980, according to the study by the Cambridge energy research group.

And some consumers are increasingly driven to conserve fuel because of
a growing uneasiness about the nation's addiction to oil, the
instability of oil-rich countries and the harmful climate effects that
stem from petroleum use.

All this has car companies rolling out new gas-electric hybrid
vehicles and touting fuel efficiency at every opportunity, a sign that
those companies believe the public's yen for saving gas is not a
fleeting fancy.

Automakers "are keeping in mind that this is a real issue, and it's a
real problem for the American driver that they have to deal with,"
said Lonnie Miller, director of industry analysis at R.L. Polk & Co.,
a Southfield, Mich., company that tracks vehicle sales.

William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Assn.,
has seen many cycles where mass transit ridership grew as gas prices
rose only to crater afterward when fuel costs returned to more normal
levels. But things are different now, he said.

"After Katrina, when many parts of the country saw prices above $3 a
gallon, we saw an immediate increase in ridership," he said. Tulsa,
Okla., which has a small bus system, saw ridership jump 28% for the
nine months after Hurricane Katrina. "When you see it in places like
that, it says to me that there's a fundamental shift going on."

As prices dropped, "some people went back to their cars," Millar said.
"But I was pleasantly surprised by the breadth of the growth, and with
the relatively small decline when prices went down."

Nationwide, trips on buses, rail and other public transit jumped the
most when the average cost of gas topped $3 a gallon, according to
figures from the trade group. But even with some subsequent drop-off,
overall ridership was up nearly 3% through the first nine months of
2006, roughly double the typical annual increase, Millar said.

But Americans clearly have their limits when it comes to conserving
fuel. One item that's definitely not on the to-do list: Driving
slower. Several states have boosted highway speed limits over the last
two years.