[jimmydean]

The one trend I'm seeing in Canada at least is a condo building frenzy.

What we may see is the start of a migration from the "far commute" locales (out of reasonable public transportation reach) to city based condos.

From my observation point this is a positive development for city/near city dwellers (less traffic on city commute highways) as well as create more oil slack.

Impact on the economy ... definitely a negative one with less housing developments, less cars and fuel purchased.

[JLK]

Good thread. When I saw the title of the thread, I immediately thought of the people commuting into NYC from the Poconos on the I-80 corridor, then when I read jmac's post I saw he used it as one of his examples.

Not only is that commute long, but it consumes a lot more fuel than you would expect because at most times during rush hour, you are forced to sit in bumper to bumper traffic for an hour or more to cross the bridge or tunnel into or out of NYC. Hybrids would save a lot of fuel here because they can use electric power at slow speeds. There are commuter train lines extending out from NYC into the burbs, but they only reach about halfway to the Poconos. I would expect them to be used a lot more as gas gets more expensive. I take a train every day into the city (not NY), and I enjoy it. I can sip my coffee and read a magazine instead of sitting on the freeway.

Telecommuting would also save a lot of fuel, but not everyone can do it. I work at home a few days at month, and I get more done on those days than when I am in the office. There is still a bias against it- a lot of people assume that you're goofing off when you stay home. Hopefully, those attitudes will change.

[jmacdaddio]

I suppose the Pocono people will still keep schlepping when gas hits $4, managing the situation by purchasing a small car for the commute and saving the SUV for trips to Sam's Club.

JLK, I'm glad the thread made you think of the I-80 morning and evening rituals. What's sad is that even if gas prices double the cost of the schlep, I think plenty of Pocono People will still do it because the 3+ hours in the car is the only time when someone's not bugging them for the latest spreadsheet or to pick up a barrel of milk and a pallet of Hot Pockets at Sam's Club on the way home from picking up Billy at karate practice. It's a sad commentary on the value we place on time in our society, but I know plenty of Pocono People who are happy to make the long drive because it's their only "me" time during the day.

Mass transit is pretty good in most cities in the NE US as long as you are going from suburb to city center. The reality of the situation is that most people are now going from suburb to suburb, and that's the mass transit problem that local and state governments need to tackle before it's too late (if it isn't already too late).

I really think the oil crunch will hit most in car-heavy places like Houston (note the irony), and other "new" Sun Belt cities. Economic studies have shown that people in Sun Belt cities pay less for housing than folks in the NE or SF Bay area, but have a greater % of their budgets taken up by transportation costs (I can't remember the article). It makes sense because if your mortgage is only $800 a month you can afford to spend $300 fueling and maintaining your SUV for the 80 mile round trip to work.

Possible benefits of $4 and $5 per gallon gas prices:
1. Increased public support for mass transit
2. Companies have to invest in the surrounding community. Pocono People in search of better schools for kids won't have as much of a reason to live in far-flung areas.
3. Wal-Mart will get taken down. Ok, maybe not but we can all hope! Their entire business model depends on their trucking fleet crossing the country with cheap imported goods - not a good way to approach the coming decade.
4. Could Congress finally make some real improvements on Amtrak? Or better yet, break it up into regional railroads? The reason the trains run on time in Germany is because they're operating on a more manageable scale. A regional US railroad from Boston to DC could work.
5. Domestic manufacturing will come back. When the cost of importing shoes (and everything else) from China is too high, look for the jobs to reappear.

I've always been amazed by the public transit system in Europe. I made it from Frankfurt Airport to a small town by public transit, only needing a taxi at the very end of the trip. It is entirely possible to have that here if we demand it.

[jaws]

My opinion is the expense in gas incurred by long-range commuters is nothing compared to the expense in time incurred. People are commuting 3 hours a day. That's 3 hours sacrificed where they could be working for pay, spending time with their family or going to roller-disco or whatever. There lies the difference between Americans and Europeans. The average European commute is something like 20 minutes. This is the result of choices made by commuters, not fuel costs. Americans made the choice of sacrificing their time to live farther and farther away from their work. Why? I'm not sure. It's possible they're just mad out of their minds. But rising fuel costs aren't going to destroy suburbia so much as it will make it an increasingly nasty place to live, but living a nasty life hasn't stopped anyone from commuting for hours.

[nero]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('some_guy282', 'A')s far as your #'s on money spent on gasoline and mileage...you're kidding, right? The average suburban commuter isn't driving a car with 27 mpg. They're not even driving a car with 20 mpg. They're driving SUV's with about 12mpg.

[jmacdaddio]

lol ..... the American mindset is one massive SUV and another SUV that's not quite as massive! I know a couple who have a GMC Yukon Denali, a GMC Envoy, and an old Ford Explorer in the garage.

I don't think the oil crunch will suddenly turn exurbs into Mad Max areas, but it will slow development and focus development back towards brownfields in America's cities.

And I still can't beileve the thought process involved in choosing to spend 3+ hours a day in the car .... my time is more valuable than that.

[some_guy282]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jmacdaddio', 'l')ol ..... the American mindset is one massive SUV and another SUV that's not quite as massive!

[Leanan]

I do think we're heading for a brick wall, though when we'll hit it is anyone's guess. I expect next year we'll start feeling some pain. Higher gas prices. The bankruptcy bill kicking in. Credit card minimum payments doubling.

Some of the "solutions" that seem obvious now won't be practical when we actually have to use them - because everyone will be trying to do the same thing. There's cheap city housing available now...but when everyone's trying to move closer to the city, there won't be. You can sell your house in the suburbs now for a huge profit - but when everyone's trying to do the same thing, you'll lose your shirt. You can easily sell your SUV and get a Corolla now, but when everyone's trying to do it, Corollas may end up worth more than Expeditions. High oil prices will cause recession eventually. Rather than letting you telecommute, the boss may welcome an excuse to fire you. Etc. The problem isn't what happens to one person. It's the cumulative effect on society.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jimmydean', 'T')he one trend I'm seeing in Canada at least is a condo building frenzy.

......

[some_guy282]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', ' ')Getting back to long commutes. $5 gas is not going to kill long commutes. Why? Simple half the cars on the road today are gas guzzling trucks or SUV's. There's so much "fat" that can be cut off even if the cost of gas were to double it would not kill long commutes. Joe "sixpack" could easily double his fuel efficiency by ditching the SUV for a more economical car.

[Leanan]

I don't think as many commuters are driving SUVs as you think. At least, long commuters. IME, they are well aware of fuel efficiency when they have to drive 50 or 60 miles a day, and generally choose smaller cars. They may still own an SUV, but their spouse drives it, or it sits in the garage during the workday. Lots of people own SUVs in my office, but the ones with long commutes - an hour or more - generally use smaller cars.

[nero]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('some_guy282', 'J')oe Sixpack cannot afford a new economical car. When the day comes that he finally has the good sense to want a more fuel efficient car, his current SUV's resale value will be down to practically nothing. Why? Because of high gas prices, and everyone else having the same idea at the same time. Joe sixpack is up to his ears in debt. Even if he could afford a new car, do you really think there will be enough new fuel efficient cars to go around? There wont be. If joe sixpack is lucky enough to still have a job, car pooling or telecommuting are much more realistic options.

Thousands of people commuting in cars (even if they're more fuel efficient cars) is inefficient and wasteful. In other words: business as usual. Business as usual cannot continue.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('some_guy282', '.')......
We are all in agreement that the suburbs are doomed as a failed living arrangement, are we not? Some of the replies I'm seeing in this thread give me the impression you guys think the suburbs will just continue chugging along, albeit with some more pain and problems. Do we or do we not agree with the title of The End of Suburbia?

.......

[mgibbons19]

There is a lot of good stuff in this thread. I can think of both kinds of families, those where there are two trucks, and those where there is a fam truck and a commuter.

On thing I might add is that we are dealing with people distributed along a spectrum. There are already folks strung out trying to commute, only they are the worst off. Inner-city folks for example may have a hard time, transpo-wise, getting to the burbs for low skill office jobs. Plenty of rural folk find themselves with very long drives in horrendous vehicles to take advantage of fairly low paying jobs. These guys are at the bottom end and will be hurt with almost any change in the fuel environment. As the price goes up, more and more folks are going to be harmed. At the same time, there are ppl who can afford 1.5 mil for a flat in NYC, and will be sitting pretty until the worst kinds of recessions hit and actually lose their jobs. The key is how is a changing fuel environment going to affect the different people along the socioeconomic and transportation scales?

One more thing. The 80s farm crisis in the US was at least partly due to specualtion on farmland that drove its value over what its productive ability actually was. Land was valued at 10k an acre when it could only support 2k per acre in mortgage payments. Economists compare housing prices to rents, but there is another way to think about them. Think of them as access to jobs. A 400k home is reasonable if it affords you and your spouse access to 200k per year in income. a 600k home, maybe not. a 1m home would be a stretch. now when fuel prices begin to change, that equation begins to change too. So when the 400k home also includes 15k more in fuel costs than previously, that brings the family income down. These are all made up numbers and of course are going to be quite different for a nice middle class family living on 50k/yr holding onto a 225k home.

FWIW, median individual salaries are around 33k/yr, and mdn household incomes are around 43/yr in the US. The average home price last month was right around 225k. The average family has something like 14k in credit cards, I think. These are round numbers, but do give you a sense of where ppl are. 4 dollar gas will certainly matter to these median ppl, and everyone below the 50th %ile.

[Leanan]

I think we will change our ways. Already, I see signs of it in my office. People who used to drive alone are now carpooling. And people are looking to get new jobs, transfer to work locations closer to their homes, or get positions where a company car is included. Many are spending hundreds of dollars a month on gas. When you go from $200 to $400 a month in gas bills, it hurts.

I don't think anyone will be commuting 70 miles to work daily in 50 years. "The End of Suburbia" is likely correct: the suburbs are the slums of the future. There may still be people living there, but they won't be the ones who can afford to commute 70 miles a day.

In any case, our whole road system is built on the premise that every uses it, and everyone pays for it. Once that is no longer true, the whole system will unwind. It's gas taxes that pay for building and maintaining highways. Along with the prices we pay to have goods shipped long distances. When people can no longer afford to buy those things, the money that pays for our highways will dry up.

Once our infrastructure starts failing due to lack of maintenance, like the Schoharie Creek Bridge pictured below, how will we fix it? And who will want to risk traveling on it?



I live near a toll bridge. It costs $1 for passenger cars. Amazingly, the tolls were higher when the bridge was originally built - even though a dollar was worth a lot more back then. It was something like $5 for a wagon, $3 for a donkey, $2 for a pedestrian. Back then, few people could actually afford the toll. Most people waited until the river froze, and walked or drove across the ice.

[nero]

I think there currently is an innate force pushing people to live further and further from the city. People aren't drawn to nature, they go out there to live as far away from the undesirable (read poor) elements of society as possible. They go out there because the schools are better and the streets safer. But the schools are better and the streets safer because the property taxes are higher and the municipalities avoid affordable housing by clever manipulation of zoning requirements.

At some point this dispersal force may reverse. If the price of gas does reach a level where it depresses house prices in the outer suburbs, it might start a runaway reaction similar to the white flight that commonly occured in the US when blacks moved into a new neighbourhood. (I don't know if that still occurs or not) When the house prices look affordable to people on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder, they move in and drive the richer people and middle class folk out depressing the house prices even more. This in effect would be "Suburban blight" a kind of self fulfilling prophesy. So the question is at what price will the winds of dispersion suddenly change direction. I think that there is a momentum towards dispersion that will require very high gas prices (or a very long time) to counteract. But once the wind starts blowing in the opposite direction (back in to the centre) it will quickly build up to a hurricane.

The upper-middle class might then move to new gated communities or condominiums closer to the city. The trend towards gated communities and private schools may depress the drive towards dispersal by providing the benefits of isolation without the problems of distance.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mgibbons19', ' ')median individual salaries are around 33k/yr, and mdn household incomes are around 43/yr in the US. The average home price last month was right around 225k. The average family has something like 14k in credit cards, I think.

[arretium]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', 'S')orry guy, I gotta dissagree with you. Suburbs are here to stay. It wouldn't surprise me if 50 years from now people still commute to work 70 miles round trip. But it won't be in an SUV. Instead it will be a hybrid compact car with a 5 gallon gas tank. Basically it's "business as usual" but without the SUV.

[some_guy282]

I stick by my assertion that the suburbs will be the slums of the future. They wont be wiped off the face of the earth by Peak Oil, they will still exist in the decades to come. People will live there. I just so happen to think that by and large (there are always exceptions) the people who live there will be poor. Is it possible the suburbs can pull together and adapt? Convert the front lawns into gardens on a large scale, etc. etc.? Sure. In order for that to happen though, the collective responses to Peak Oil from individual Americans all the way up to governments will have to be rational and orderly. If we lived in a rational and orderly world, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with! I don't think the response to Peak Oil will be rational. I'll quote James Kunstler: "It's going to be a clusterfuck."

The whole "white flight" comparison is a good one. A few weeks ago I was explaining the concept of Peak Oil to someone, and how the suburbs were in for trouble. "The'll have to move the poor people from the inner cities and put them in the suburbs then," he said. That had never occured to me before, but it makes perfect sense. As the cost of travel and the panic to flee the suburbs increases, property values within and close to cities will go up proportionatly. The poor currently living within the inner city may get priced out of the city and be forced to move to the only place they can afford to - the newly dirt cheap suburbs. It could happen.

As far as analysis of Joe Sixpack being able to adjust economically to the coming crisis, I think you need only look at current economic statistics. Others have posted some #'s above that give you a good idea I think. I'm too lazy to Google indepth stuff right now though. I've been keeping up with financial news and analysis on the net since becoming Peak Oil aware, and we're facing some truely frightening financial times regardless of Peak Oil. Jim Puplava is an economist who is aware of Peak Oil, and does a 3 hour audio show every weekend. I highly recommend it. Puplava and other economists like him are talking about the inevitability of a huge recession (Second Great Depression even)relatively soon, because of factors that have nothing to do with Peak Oil! Peak Oil just makes everything worse.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('some_guy282', 'P')uplava and other economists like him are talking about the inevitability of a huge recession (Second Great Depression even)relatively soon, because of factors that have nothing to do with Peak Oil!