We're in uncharted territory right now in terms of what economists call the "elasticity" of the price of gasoline - the amount people's consumption drops as prices rise. The conventional wisdom was that the price was relatively inelastic - that we'd just pay whatever it cost. But somewhere in the $3.50 range, something snapped. A great story by Lloyd Jojola in this morning's paper (part of the paper's Energy Crunch series) captures the effect:

One commuter route has seen passenger loads more than double in the past couple months.
    ABQ Ride boardings surpassed 909,000 in May, an 8 percent increase compared with the same month last year. But more marked increases have occurred on bus routes that largely serve commuters, causing the transit agency to make changes to accommodate more ridership.
    "Our bigger increases have been in the commuter routes, and they have been over the last couple of months vs. the first part of the fiscal year," said Art Martinez, a Transit Department spokesman. "We were definitely seeing steady growth, but we're seeing spikes in the last couple of months."
    A prime example: the Route 96 service that runs weekday mornings and evenings from the Cottonwood Mall park and ride site on the West Side to Kirtland Air Force Base. By observation alone, it's a standing-room-only service at times.

The best recent data on elasticity that I'm aware of comes from a Congressional Budget Office study released in January. They found some interesting longe-term trends, as people slowly shifted to smaller cars beginning in the 2004 time frame as prices slowly started to rise.

They also found that, for every 50 cent increase in the price of gas, the number of freeway trips in LA decreased 0.7 percent on routes where there was a good transit alternative. That's frankly not very much. But their data predates the $3.50 tipping point. It will be interesting to see what data for this spring shows.

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