$4 a Gallon? Whatever

ROCHESTER - The area is bracing for gasoline prices to hit $4/gallon. I don't care. Sure, it sucks when I fill up. Lucky for me I don't suffer from any sort of over-compensation issues and I drive a small fuel efficient car. I also believe that similar outrage was voiced when we first went over a dollar a gallon, then at two dollars, etc. We deserve this. We have over consumed for too long and the chickens have come home to roost. Had we learned from the 70's we would have spent the 80's and 90's coming up with and implementing real solutions (suspending the gas tax is not a real solution!). Instead, the crisis died down, and we went back to being gas pigs. We killed public transit in favor of cars, we emptied our cities into the suburban outskirts and we made our cars even bigger than they were in the 70's.

So here we are, our arrogance, laziness and smugness have left us at the will of big oil. If you commute from Ontario County to Rochester in your Yukon or H3 I don't feel bad for you. I hope you have to pay $10/gallon. I really do. I will laugh at you as you cry poor because those are your choices. You used to look down on me for driving my small car back and forth from my small house in the city. Four dollars a gallon doesn't make me poor, and my guess is it doesn't make you poor either.

What we have here is opportunity, though. This need not turn into wasted anger. This should be a chance for us to break free of Big Oil. Somewhere John Rockefeller is making it rain and that is just wrong. Wind power, solar power, geo thermal power, and even methane gas from land fills are avenues we should be exploring instead of bowing down to Exxon/Mobil, OPEC and the others. Instead of paying to build an oasis in a far away desert, we should be creating new American companies to feed our energy needs. Even Rockefeller would appreciate that.

We should also revisit our planning for both sprawl and transit. Expressways, multi-county metro areas and distant office parks are all luxuries from a different time. We can not afford to continue to spread out and stretch our resources so thin. We have all the roads, sewers and sidewalks we need, why are we building more? Do you like high taxes? It seems that way. Transportation is crying out for attention. Just because most Americans have cars doesn't mean we have to use them every day. Wouldn't some of you like to use your car for pleasure instead of commuting? I would. Rochester buses are cutting fares to one dollar per ride. For two bucks you can go back and forth to work. Plus you can get some reading time in. Most of us in this area will tell you, however, that it is not practical to ride the bus because of where you live and where the bus actually goes. I feel your pain. Instead of dismissing the thought, though, we need to look at the routes and see if they make sense. Can they be changed to serve more people? Is there an opportunity to incorporate other modes of transit like light rail? Would it be offensive to run some rail cars down the middle of 490, 590, or 390?

Expensive gas is a disease. We always treat the symptoms. This is problematic because until we treat the disease we will always see rising prices. Sometimes we get a respite (gas tax holiday), we stop thinking about it and then, BAM!, $4 a gallon and the cycle starts all over again. So let's take this chance to get to the root of the problem while people are mad, motivated, and demanding action and before its too late. Let's not be pandered to with short term 'solutions' like gas tax holidays. We have the opportunity to make wise long term decisions that will set our area up for growth for years to come. Don't be bought out by 32 cents a gallon when our future is at stake. In reality, $4 a gallon probably won't change how we live our lives. $5 a gallon won't likely either. But can we afford to still be standing around with our energy pants down when gas hits a price per gallon no one can afford?