James Bacon
hits all the right points at the beginning of his most recent column:
Between the cost of purchasing an automobile, fueling it, repairing it and paying insurance on it, car ownership is getting very expensive: Since 1999, the IRS standard mileage deduction has increased from 31 cents to 50.5 cents -- an increase of roughly 60 percent. Meanwhile, roads are getting more crowded and travel delays worse. Nationally, congestion costs per peak traveler have jumped from $533 in 2000 to $796 in 2005. Moreover, cars remain deadly: In 2006, more than 42,000 Americans died in traffic accidents.
It is useful to measure the costs of automobile travel in more than just at-the-pump prices and carbon footprint. The human cost in terms of automobile accidents alone is staggering, especially when using transit is
clearly much safer. Yet, the modest gains in ridership that transit has seen recently aren't keeping pace with overall increases in traffic congestion and movement to single-occupant vehicles. The innovation gap that Bacon here addresses is no doubt one of the contributing factors, at least in a marketing sense.
It's pretty obvious to anyone who's seen a
car commercial that selling cars is becoming more about the amenities that having nothing to do with driving and the experience you have while driving - whiz-bang technology that turns your driver's seat into a mobile command unit connected to every piece of communications technology you own. A car is not only (and sometimes not at all) positioned as something that gets you somewhere; it's also someplace to be,
all by itself:“I think a vehicle today has to be your most favorite room under your roof,” [Robert] Nardelli [new CEO of Chrysler] said. “I really believe that. I mean, it has to bring you gratification, it has to be tranquil. It’s incidental that it gets you from Point A to B, right?”
And as crazy as that sounds, he's right. On the whole, we've accepted high gas prices, massive congestion, land gobbled up by highways, auto-centric development, and made due with tiny offices in our automobiles, dangerous multitasking, and a massive amount of wasted time. To the extent that we've adjusted to that, however, transit needs to due much better at meeting those market demands. Particularly in Roanoke, Valley Metro is solely concerned with Point-A-to-Point-B service (for a number of reasons, most of them very reasonable) and offers no real amenities. With the SmartWay service, they have addressed that with a limited audience and only on a single route, but it's a start.
The BP station on 9th charged $3.05 for Regular - the most, I believe, I have ever paid. We're a one car family who already carpools everyday, so it will be tough to cut much more out of our budget; perhaps using Valley Metro for more weekend shopping trips will be in the cards, though even now we're pretty good at
trip-chaining so there isn't a lot of fat to trim there, either.