Thursday, September 29, 2005

The Grip of Gas (reposted)

The Grip of Gas
Why you'll pay through the nose to keep driving.
By Austan Goolsbee
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2005, at 9:54 AM PT

President Bush called on Americans to drive less yesterday
in response to the "disruption"
caused by the Gulf of Mexico hurricanes. Will they? High fuel prices
make the question a natural one. Conservation advocates, along with
policy-makers and the press, have been grasping for evidence that the
answer is yes. Here's what they've collected so far: Toyota's
announcement that Hurricane Katrina boosted demand for hybrids, the D.C.
Metro's strong ridership last month, and a report of large SUVs sitting
unsold on a car lot in Texas. Unfortunately, the economics suggests a
pretty clear answer to what this adds up to: not much.

In repeated studies of consumer purchases over the years in the
developed world, drivers in the United States consistently rank as the
least sensitive to changes in gas prices. Even when gas gets expensive,
we just keep on truckin'. The latest estimates, based on a comprehensive
study released in 2002, predict that if prices rose from $3 per gallon
to $4 per gallon and stayed there for a year (far greater and longer
than the impact of Katrina), purchases of gasoline in the United States
would fall only about 5 percent.

Why don't we ratchet down more when fuel prices go up? The rule of thumb
in economics is that people react to price increases only when they can
turn to substitutes. Raise the price of Ford trucks and sales go way
down because you can buy your truck from Chrysler or GM or Toyota
instead. Raise the price of gasoline and what are the alternatives? As a
New York Times article pointed out
on
Sunday, people can't change the type of fuel they put in their cars, and
they can't stop going to work. They might take one less driving vacation
or check their tire pressure more often when they fill up. But that
hardly makes a dent in the total numbers.

Gasoline purchases are, in fact, the kind of buying affected least by
price changes because they are so closely tied up with other things we
already own. When you buy a $1,000 digital camcorder that uses a
specific brand of tape, you lock yourself in. If the cartridges get
expensive, you have to eat the increased cost until you buy a new
camcorder. Gasoline follows the same pattern. In the last two decades
when gasoline was cheap, Americans switched from cars to minivans and
SUVs, seriously reducing their gas mileage. Also, many moved farther
from their places of work=C2=AD, to suburbs and then ex-urbs. In the =
1990s,
the average commute time rose about 15 percent, and the share of people
commuting alone rose dramatically to more than three out of every four
American workers, according to the 2000 census. As jobs moved out of
central cities and into suburbs, car-pooling became more difficult and
public transportation often unavailable. Less than 5 percent of the
population regularly uses public transportation to get to work now (and
even that number includes people taking taxis). In Europe and Japan,
people drive less when the cost of gas goes up because they still can.
On average, they live closer to their jobs. About 20 percent of
Europeans walk or ride their bike to work (more than five times the
share in the United States).

Practically speaking, the only hope of changing America's driving habits
is a hefty price increase that lasts. For, oh, five years. The data show
that after that long, even the response of American drivers to higher
prices can be pretty sizable. Five years gives people the time to come
up with substitutes. Higher commuting costs over that many years could
induce you to buy a smaller car, move closer to work, find a car pool
for your kids. Of course, that's why Hurricane Katrina is not likely to
have a lasting impact on gasoline use. It's a big blip, but only a
transitory one. Which means it's exactly what consumers don't change
their behavior for.

Think about the choice between the hybrid and gasoline versions of the
Toyota Highlander SUV. At the moment, the hybrid costs about $9,000
more. Optimistically it could double your gas mileage from 17 to 34
miles per gallon (if you only drove in the city, say). A family driving
the average of 12,000 miles per year would use about 29 fewer gallons
per month with the hybrid. Even if the hurricane drove the price of gas
to $5 a gallon for three months, the hybrid would only save them about
$441 total over that time. The savings just don't add up in the short or
medium run. For the average family to justify the hybrid at its current
price based on fuel savings, gas prices would have to stay at $5 per
gallon for several years. Or, if prices stay where they are, the savings
would eventually add up if you kept driving your hybrid for a few
decades.

With time horizons like this, it's no wonder that few people change
their behavior when gas prices spike temporarily. Even the oil crisis of
1979, the biggest ever, did not have much lasting impact on America's
intensive use of energy. Within five years, prices had fallen
dramatically and people took off their Jimmy Carter cardigans and went
back to their energy-happy ways. One of the oldest lessons economists
have for thinking about what changes consumer demand is that moral
exhortation doesn't change people's behavior. Prices do. Except that for
a commodity like gasoline, even prices don't do an impressive job.

Austan Goolsbee is an economics professor at the University of Chicago
Graduate School of Business and a senior research fellow at the American
Bar Foundation.

Johnson, Betsy, and Bush

Here's one of the most insightful articles I have read about Katrina - about Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and the political and social parallels to the present.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Doves - Some Cities (***/****)

Doves' Some Cities is the album you put on at high volume in the car at 8 am on a Saturday morning as you're leaving for a road trip. Sometimes sparse and frazzled Brit-rock with stomping drums, sometimes Blur-like with poppy keyboard touches, sometimes heartfelt and well-executed mellower songs, Some Cities takes you on a journey. Don't play this album on shuffle. The obvious comparisons to Coldplay are unfair, because although the similarities are there the Doves have their own thing going on.

Try this "link" for sound clips.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Floating Houses



Check out this Dutch floating house idea. Potential for use in New Orleans? Probably not on a widespread basis due to cost, but it's a cool idea.

Monday, September 26, 2005

Weekend highlights

A great weekend, somehow we kept ourselves busy despite not really having any plans going in... Here are some highlights:

- Heather and I had a fantastic dinner Friday night and an even better jazz brunch Sunday at a local restaurant that shall go nameless, for now, on the flat of the Hill. Dinner and brunch were so great, and the atmosphere so low key and neighborhood-like, that I don't want to start giving away the secret then see the place overrun! It's difficult to get a table at our usual brunch spots mere yards away, but this place was very accommodating and even better quality! If you really want to know, then ask nicely and maybe I'll tell.

- ND beat Washington 36-17. Now we're #13. I slept through the 4th quarter. Check out this story about Charlie Weis' inspirational playcalling, granting a dying boy his wish. The stuff of legends.

- Did you know Boston had a 375th anniversary parade yesterday? Neither did we until we ran across it while shopping on Boylston Street.

- Saw Tim Robbins-Burton's stop-motion Corpse Bride yesterday. It exceeded Robbins-Burton's usual mastery of dark and spooky atmospherics and brilliant color, and unlike some recent Robbins-Burton movies this one actually has an engaging plot and instantly endearing characters voiced by the likes of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Heather especially liked the skeleton dog, Scraps. Go see it!

- Excellent dinner at Paramount with Heather and her parents before they headed to Sudbury for the night.

- I got one of those tribal tattoos on my upper arm, it's pretty cool. (just checking if you're paying attention, mom)

- Went for a 5 mile run on the Charles Sunday morning. Need to do that more often. That would have been a better resolution at the beginning of the summer than in September.

- Bit the bullet and bought a new digital camera, the Canon SD400. Whoa, it's a lot smaller and lighter without the Best Buy security anchor attached!

Friday, September 23, 2005

White Stripes anecdote

A friend of mine went to last night's show at the Opera House and pointed out the abundance of underage kids there with their parents. Apparently entire sections of the mezzanine were sitting during the first part of the show, except for one teenage kid wearing a WS shirt and going nuts. Jack noticed, and between songs called the kid out and told him he rocked, which got the rest of the crowd around the kid standing.

Then a few songs later, Jack noticed everyone was standing and yelled to him again - "Look what you did! Roadies - get that kid a copy of everything we're selling tonight!" A few minutes later, a roadie showed up with an armload of stuff for the kid.

Goes to show you, sometimes the one person standing in a crowd is rewarded with more than verbal abuse and projectiles tossed from the people behind him.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

White Stripes - Opera House

Am I the only one who thinks the White Stripes are overrated? Just a bit? I haven't heard this much hype about an album since Radiohead's Ok Computer. I mean, everyone loves the White Stripes, especially the know-it-all "critics". Every one of them. I wonder if I would actually like Jack and Meg much more if I didn't have this adverse reaction to everyone telling me how great they are all the time. Seriously.

I do like 6 or 7 of their songs, a lot. They do have their own thing going on with Meg's straight ahead drums and Jack's huge guitar sound. I respect their ability to strike out in new directions, and Get Behind Me Satan definitely doesn't sound forced or fake. And I do think Jack is a great songwriter and kick-ass frontman, but for some reason a lot of his songs just aren't exactly my favorites. So sue me.

Last night at the Opera House it seemed to me something was missing. Maybe it's because we were up in the balcony where any distortion on the guitar turned the whole mix to mush. I guess the Opera House wasn't acoustically designed in 1928 for amps with the gain turned up to 11. Meg's drums were thunderous and fill-less, propelling songs along like a freight train. Jack played all their hits without a set list and often in unusual arrangements (Hotel Yorba on piano, for example), which was very cool. So why do I still feel a bit disappointed?

For true White Stripes fans who think I'm full of crap, here's Eileen's review of the same show.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Rock n Roll!

Oh, man! On My Signal was out of control last night! Ari was drinking JD straight from the bottle, knocking over amps, their drummer did a flying stage dive from his bass drum into the crowd, the crowd was inches from completely rushing the stage!

Ok. I admit. I didn't make the show because they went on at 10:30 and I'm lame. Everything I wrote might have happened though.

Monday, September 19, 2005

Ah, Monday

I'm busy at work so will be short on writing today, but a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Thanks to everyone that came out for my birthday Friday, I really had an awesome time! We had dinner at the Miracle of Science in Central Square - mmmm burgers. Then ice cream at Toscanini's, here's the ice cream cupcake Heather got me:


Then here's a shot to get an idea of scale...is the cupcake small or is my head huge?


Me after tequila:


Saturday - I won't even mention the football game...oops, I just did.


Sunday - had brunch at the Sherborn Inn - always excellent! Then we stopped by Mark & Katie's to supervise the construction of their new shed. When I say supervise, I mean "watch" vs. actually take part in any way. Check it out! A serious project!


Here's an old picture of As Fast As from the Big Easy in Portland I just downloaded from Heather's camera. Random, I know.

Friday, September 16, 2005

28 years old

Ha, my birthday today and the best gift I could have asked for is Eileen's blog entry. Check out my brother next to me, too bad he's not very photogenic...

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

On My Signal - Framingham represents

For those of you from the Ham, Ari Fontecchio's band On My Signal is touring this fall and will be at the Abbey Lounge on Monday. I saw them about 6 months ago and all hometown bias aside, they rocked!

* They have music online at http://www.purevolume.com/onmysignal

The Abbey Lounge
3 Beacon Street
Somerville MA 02143
www.abbeylounge.com

Monday, September 12, 2005

Portland, Maine

We had an amazing weekend in Portland, the city charmed us to the point that Heather picked up real estate brochures on the way back to Boston. She just put it the right way – it was like if someone dreamed up a city for us - walkable, funky, artsy, compact, friendly, small enough to be affordable, musical…..Portland has it all. Well, except maybe jobs and, um, I don't know a single person that lives there.

We took the Amtrak Downeaster up from Boston Saturday morning, $20 each way for the 2 ½ hour ride. Not bad. Grabbed a cab from the train station, the cabbie dropped us at J’s Oysters right on the water where we caught the first half of the ND-Michigan game.


We moved to Nappi's at halftime and watched the rest of the game there. Solid win for the Irish, we’re now #10! Checked into the Portland Harbor Hotel, in the background in the picture above, which was extremely nice (although I’d say overpriced) and right in the middle of the Old Port area, then walked over to the Fore Street Grill for dinner where we had a four star (in my book) meal at the bar. The Fore Street Grill was interesting, from the outside there is no sign and it looks almost like an industrial building, on the inside it is a trendy restaurant. Mussels, great wine, swordfish, green beans with mustard sauce, beets, champagne and dessert. We weren’t messing around.

Here's part of Fore Street, the slight jog in the street creates the sense of enclosure similar to Charles Street in Boston, which when combined with the architecture and lively mix of shops, bars, restaurants, hotels, apartments and condos makes this a great space:




Custom House Wharf:



Next we wandered around, did some shopping, had a beer (ok, a few) at a very cozy Irish pub on Fore Street, then headed to the Alehouse to catch some local bands. The bands weren’t playing, but we were entertained by the strange bouncer who told us all about getting in the way of a chainsaw during a fight when he was 15. The story turned out to be a big lie, but he wasn’t lying when he pointed us down the street for actual live music at the Big Easy. Very different from the Boston Big Cheesy, this Big Easy was a cool dive, we saw As Fast As, who kicked ass!

A pedestrian alley, active even at night:




Sunday we woke up, wandered some more, and ended up in a grittier section of Portland about 10-15 minutes from the Old Port area. Had one of the best brunches I’ve ever had at Five Fifty-Five, a converted firehouse. More wandering, including the indoor public market (above) - a collection of local butchers, fish, bakeries, produce, etc. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, everything was so fresh I wished I hadn't just had a huge brunch.

We wandered for the rest of the day, and saw lots of cool stuff. Luckily, all the pictures I took on my screen-less camera actually came out ok.

More cool streets & architecture:



A fantastic pocket park we stumbled across:



A HUGE cruise ship in from England and Ireland looming over the city:

Friday, September 09, 2005

Maine again!

Heather and I are taking the train up to Portland tomorrow morning and spending the night at the Portland Harbor Hotel as our birthday present to each other. It's going to be cold up there tomorrow night, 45! I'd better dig out my winter jacket...

And by the way, we will definitely be at a bar watching the ND-Michigan game, Heather even claims to be looking forward to it! GO IRISH!!

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Heather's birthday

Question: how many framed "best of" plaques do you need on your restaurant wall before you are entitled to act snooty at the expense of your customers? Answer: I couldn't count them all, but ask the folks at Oleana, Kendall Square's self-proclaimed gift to the Boston area culinary scene, and they'll gladly let you know.

Heather and her friend Katie share the same exact same birthday (yesterday), so we went out to celebrate along with Katie's boyfriend Andrew, their friends Cindy and Shelley, and Cindy's brother Ivan. Great food and wine enjoyed at our cozy table in their incredible outdoor patio, if only my camera was working... I had tuna with a spicy pomegranite paste and cucumber salad - it was delicious!

Oleana, however, did not let me bring in the cake I had for Heather and Katie, no outside cakes allowed because they hurt the pastry chef's ego, which must be as delicate as the crust on the baked Alaska we shared for dessert. On our way out I asked them to cut the cake in half so each of the birthday girls could take some home. No way. Not happening. Even worse, they don't serve liqour so it was no go on the traditional birthday tequila shots. So they get a big thumbs up on food and atmosphere, big thumbs down on bad attitude.

So we took the cake to the B Side Lounge down the street, where they gladly cut it for us and served up the tequila. A great ending to a great night! Happy Birthday Heather!

Steven Wright addresses New Urbanists

Everywhere is walking distance...if you have the time.

New Orleans - 2 links

These 2 links were forwarded to me, first, a link to a timeline of events. Not flattering for GW and his cronies. Second, a link to a National Geographic article published in October of 2004 with eerily accurate predictions about the potential impact of a hurricane on New Orleans. Thanks to Ernie from Chi-town and my Uncle Jordan for the links.

I swear, I'll write about something besides New Orleans soon.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Nano

Whoa! Check out the new ipod!

New Orleans - Gulf Sails

Check out this New Orleans resident's blog again for an inside look at New Orleans - the latest post is a call to arms to not give up on the great city. I have been following this guy for a week, it's truly fascinating to see his life change from sailing enthusiast to hurricane survivor to inspirational spokesperson for the city.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Eyesore


While on the subject of Jim Kunstler and New Orleans, here's September's eyesore of the month with Kunstler's commentary.

New Orleans 3 - energy, volunteering

I try to avoid turning on the tv, because it's hard to turn off the Katrina coverage. I try to avoid protracted conversations about New Orleans, because it seems like the same conversation over and over.

Interesting to see Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's comments regarding energy efficiency. I think he might almost get it. Suspending the gas tax and other "band-aids" are NOT short term fixes, they will make the situation far worse in the long run. Energy efficient cars aren't the solution either. This is an opportunity for federal, state, and local leaders to educate about REAL long-term sustainable solutions, which I don't think the American public is quite ready to hear. So instead we hear about suspending the gas tax (bad!) and driving hybrid cars (misdirection!).

By the way, am I the only one that finds Romney's criticism of the federal response to Katrina incredibly inappropriate political posturing?

Jim Kunstler's comments regarding New Orleans and the future.

What I am thinking about lately is going to New Orleans and donating time as a civil engineer. Need to see what my company thinks about that; I think I'll float it to them today. I can't afford to take 2 unpaid weeks though.

For those who can, donate to the Red Cross.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

New Orleans 2 - gas prices

I know this log of gas prices is meant as a commentary on post-hurricane price gouging, but I hope the anger felt at rising gas prices will be followed by a real change in driving habits and development patterns. I wrote about this a week ago; I really believe it will take a catastrophic disruption to wake up America.

New Orleans

Reaction to the continuing updates from New Orleans can't be put into words. Here is a New Orleans resident's blog (link stolen from Eileen). As a civil engineer and urbanist it is hard for me to process how a major American city is on the verge of destruction in 2005, and as disturbing, how the public order has broken down.

My two visits to New Orleans had a huge impression on my concept of what makes a city great. Discussion of reconstruction, when it is time, must focus on maintaining New Orleans' unique culture and style, not building typical US suburbia or Houston-esque placeless urbanization. This will be difficult, because the latter route is far cheaper and easier in the short term. More to come.