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The other night on some Denver television news program,
people on the street were being asked How high would
gasoline prices have to get before you started using public
transportation to get to work?
My wife and I started laughing. My morning commute consists of coming downstairs, as does hers on some days. She also works part-time at the local library, which is all of three blocks away. The only time driving has ever been involved in her commute was one summer afternoon when her quitting time coincided with a serious hailstorm, and she called me to come get her in the car.
We live within convenient walking or bicycling distance -- less than a dozen blocks -- from the supermarket, post office, bookstores, pharmacies, hardware store, bank, tavern, cafe and other staples of mundane commerce. It's by choice; we looked for a house close to downtown in our small town, mostly because we didn't want to be stuck hauling our kids around years ago.
So it's easy to feel smug when last week's $3.899 posting on the gas station is up to $4.039 today. And I can't develop a lot of sympathy for Hummer-driver folks in their 5,000-square-foot mountain mansions on 35 acres that sit 15 or 20 miles from town.
But as a
New York Times article points out, it isn't just the
remote McMansion owners who are getting squeezed: Across
broad swaths of the South, Southwest and the upper Great
Plains, the combination of low incomes, high gas prices and
heavy dependence on pickup trucks and vans is putting an
even tighter squeeze on family budgets.
That article focused on the South, but here in my part of the Southwest, the same story could be told: gas-guzzling pickups and low incomes, often combined with long commutes to such work as there is. Salida is not known for high wages, and even so people commute to work here from places like Howard, 17 miles away, Villa Grove, 22, and even farther.
Although I don't commute, I live in a town that is quite dependent on auto-based tourism. The Jet Set will get to Aspen and Santa Fé, but will our tourists be able to afford to drive the family station wagon out from Iowa or Illinois? Many of the goods and services and amenities that I enjoy are made possible by their spending; without their sales taxes, what becomes of our streets and parks?
Further, it's not as though Salida, Colo., sits in anything like Lancaster County, Pa., and its productive farms. This is high desert with rocky soil and a short growing season. Our local Safeway is an easy walk, but everything in it is trucked in from somewhere else, and rising fuel consts translate to higher grocery bills. That applies also to the hardware store, the lumber yard, the bookstore, and every other place I frequent. Granted, the local brew-pub makes its beer in town, but the barley malt and hops come from somewhere else.
In other words, the feeling of smugness doesn't last long when I realize that just about everything I consume is trucked in from far away and is affected by rising fuel prices. You can walk, but you can't hide.
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