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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Drivers Not Changing Their Habits

By John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
      Albuquerque motorists' appetite for driving shrank little in April, despite rapidly rising gasoline prices, according to a new federal report.
    While rural New Mexico drivers cut their mileage 3 percent in April compared with a year ago, according to the Federal Highway Administration, urban driving in the state — primarily in the Albuquerque metro area — was essentially unchanged.
    One of the region's top planning officials cautioned that it takes time for large-scale changes in behavior to show up. But the new data point to a reality about New Mexico driving: While mass transit ridership is up dramatically, most of us are still using our cars.
    The data are preliminary, and subject to revision, according to Federal Highway Administration spokesman Doug Hecox. Whether driver behavior has changed since April, as gasoline approached $4 a gallon, is not clear, though there are signs that big changes in gasoline sales did not really begin setting in until May.
    Celeste Jarvis is an example of the kind of New Mexico commuter who has no choice about how to get to work. She said her employer let her shift her work schedule to avoid the rush hour, saving fuel she was losing while stuck in traffic on her 10-mile commute from the West Side to her job in the Northeast Heights.
    The shift has cut her gasoline bills, she said. But because of the logistics of two kids in school and day care, Jarvis said carpooling or public transit is not an option. Jarvis said she has no choice but to cut back on other spending and pay for the gasoline she still has to buy.
    On Monday, Jarvis got a call from her son's baby sitter saying he was sick and she needed to pick him up. “If I carpooled, there would be no way to get him,” she said. “It's tough.”
    Data on our actual commuting behavior are hard to come by. The most recent comprehensive study dates to 2006, when a survey by the U.S. Census Bureau found eight out of 10 Albuquerque-area workers drove to work alone. By comparison, fewer than one in 70 used public transportation.
    Transit ridership has risen substantially since then, but new Federal Highway Administration numbers suggest that has not made much of a dent in the miles residents of New Mexico's cities drive.
    In April 2008, the agency estimates New Mexico's urban drivers, primarily those in the Albuquerque metro area, drive 711 million miles, compared with 713 million miles in April 2007.
    Nationally, urban driving dropped 1 percent in April 2008 compared with April 2007, but New Mexico's drop was just 0.2 percent.
    April was the month when gasoline prices crept up to the then-unprecedented $3.50 per gallon mark. Monday's average price of a gallon of regular in New Mexico was $3.96, according to AAA.
    In April, the ABQRide bus system saw an additional 2,000 riders a day compared with a year ago, and ridership has continued to climb. But because about 300,000 people commute to work alone in their cars every day, according to the latest census data, an extra 2,000 bus riders is not enough to make a serious dent in the total number of cars on the road.
    It is unclear how significant the April data is, said Chris Blewett of the Mid-Region Council of Governments, the regional planning agency for the greater Albuquerque metro area.
    It can take years for significant trends to show up in the transit data, Blewett said. He noted that, with continuing growth in the metro area, one would expect miles driven to actually rise if nothing else changed. The fact that they did not suggests some decrease in driving.
    Driver behavior may have changed significantly since the April highway data were collected, according to Ruben Baca of the New Mexico Petroleum Marketers Association — the retailers who sell you your gasoline. Baca said that in recent weeks his members have reported sales down 5 percent to 10 percent in New Mexico's urban areas compared with a year ago.
    That is consistent with national data from the MasterCard Pulse retail consulting firm, which reported big drops in gasoline sales beginning in May.
   

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