Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on May 13, 2012
The 10 Cities That Are Most Screwed By Peak Oil
Gas prices may finally be cutting into American sprawl, as cities have started growing faster than suburbs and people are driving less than they used to.
So what happens if gas prices keep going higher?
You can’t live in a cities like Merriam, Kansas without driving everywhere, as Maggie Koerth-Baker observes in Before the Lights Go Out.
We looked at the cities that spend the most at the gas pump, with 2010 data from consumer data site Bundle. You can imagine what will happen in these places if prices double, triple or worse.
Oklahoma City households spend about $2,529 at the pump in a year
Durham, N.C., households spend about $2,596 to navigating two massive highways
Chandler, Ariz., households spend about $2,596 on a grid
San Jose, Calif., households spend about $2,596 to reach the surrounding state parks
Fremont, Calif., households spend about $2,764 mostly riding I-880
Plano, Texas, households spend about $2,853 navigating the north suburbs of Dallas
Scottsdale, Ariz., households spend about $3,100 on gas moving around the green part of the desert
Irvine, Calif., households spend $3,390 at the pump and deal with traffic from L.A. and San Diego
Raleigh, N.C., households spend about $3,459 to go in a big circle
Austin households spend about $4,052 to get around
How will we survive?
8 Comments on "The 10 Cities That Are Most Screwed By Peak Oil"
Kenz300 on Sun, 13th May 2012 7:08 pm
Gas prices double….. Gas mileage more than doubles…
40+ mpg is better than 9 mpg.
Bring on the electric, flex-fuel, hybrid, CNG, LNG and hydrogen fueled vehicles. It is time to end the oil monopoly at the pump.
DC on Sun, 13th May 2012 7:28 pm
All that useless ‘infastruture’, so expensive, so wasteful, and so…pointless. But the US of Oil is quite literally willing to kill to keep it going. The corporate state has no intention of releasing its grip on its obese, corn-fed, heavily medicated slaves.
How will you survive? By makeing enemies of the entire world, and force them to keep useing your debased currency? That wont work for much longer.
Or you can entertain the fantasy the EVs, Fool-cell cars, bio-fools whatever, running along the same indifferntly built roads at the same or higher-cost, will ‘solve’ the problem, somehow.I wonder what the people in Scottsdale, and those other places would be paying a year if they all drove fool-cell cars. Probly something like 10-15k a year for fuel haha. And the cities will still be as ugly, poorly built, sprawly and as expensive to maintain as they are now, likely more so, regardless of how amerikans trash-bins are powered.
Plantagenet on Sun, 13th May 2012 9:44 pm
In Oklahoma city folks are shifting to CNG cars —they pay about half for CNG compared to what other people in the USA have to pay for gasoline.
BillT on Mon, 14th May 2012 12:29 am
DC, as usual, you are 100% correct. The Empire will kill everyone else to keep the fat cats fat. The dreamers will think tech will keep them driving to the Malls and their TVs powered up for “American Idol”. Until it doesn’t and we are fast approaching that day.
Switch to CNG…and soon it will cost as much as gas. Why? Oil make the parts for that CNG system. All of them. The wells that bring that gas to the surface is made of steel. Steel is made by using huge amounts of oil. Steel gets more and more expensive, driving up the cost to recover NG. Etc.
A new world is coming. A world not even dreamed of by the techies. A world more like 1800 than 2100 but without much energy.
MrEnergyCzar on Mon, 14th May 2012 12:57 am
I thought Austin was a green city. No wonder they’ve been aggressive with installing charging stations…
MrEnergyCzar
Beery on Mon, 14th May 2012 4:41 am
Merriam is only about 10 miles from Oklahoma City. I can cycle that in an hour without even breaking a sweat. It’s hardly in the middle of nowhere.
The fact that people in all these places go through gasoline like it’s going out of style does not mean that they MUST go through gasoline so fast. Even at $4/gallon, gas is still cheap. People will use it until it gets expensive. Then they’ll cut back on driving, switch to bicycles for short trips, start using public transit. Expensive gasoline is hardly going to make these cities ghost towns.
BillT on Mon, 14th May 2012 10:42 am
Beery, can you typical obese American bicycling 10 miles when they have not walked farther than from their car to a mall in the last 20 years? A block away is the middle of nowhere to them.
Yes, they will use public transport soon. Then, as it become too expensive, they will walk, but not 10 miles. Cheap plentiful oil is all that keeps large cities alive. These cities will eventually either break into small towns or they will be abandoned totally. When that happens, I would not want to live withing walking/biking distance.
Windmills on Mon, 14th May 2012 3:43 pm
There are options, but can they be rolled out in the economic situation we’re likely to face in the future? Will we have the time and the money to make these transitions since it looks like we’ll wait until the last minute? Will the price of oil change slowly enough to spark a transition and yet give people time to complete it? Our complacency on this issue is forcing us into the default option of gambling on our future. Regardless of whether or not we get lucky in keeping this ship from sinking, I agree with BillT that the future mostly likely will look more Victorian than Star Trek.