FOCUS: CHANGING DRIVING HABITS
Drivers continue to conserve even though gas prices dip
The price of gas has begun to dip below $4 in Western New York. But that doesn’t mean Bob Atwood and Steve Ockler, friends and co-workers at pressure-instrumentation manufacturer GP:50 on Grand Island are about to give up car-pooling to work.
Neither will Niagara Falls Fire Capt. John Carey stop biking to his firehouse.
Coleen Czechowski, of Alden, plans to continue buying gas on reservations and combining errands with the commute home from her travel agency job in Lewiston to save money.
“The thought of loosening up hasn’t even crossed my mind,” Czechowski said.
In Western New York and across the nation, motorists have dramatically changed their transportation habits, and so far, there are no signs of letting go of their new lifestyles.
Nationwide, Americans drove 12.2 billion fewer miles this June compared with the same month last year, marking a 4.5 percent decline, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
“Clearly, more Americans chose to stay close to home in June than in previous years,” said Transportation Secretary Mary Peters.
Ridership on the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority’s buses and subways has skyrocketed. In July, the NFTA provided 2,278,502 trips — a whopping 23 percent increase from the previous July.
The spike in ridership is part of a longer-term increase in people switching to public transportation. Between August 2007 and July 2008, the NFTA logged 27,323,430 trips, up from 24,524,265 from the same time period a year earlier — an 11.4 percent increase.
That tells NFTA officials that people are turning to alternative forms of transportation and sticking with it, even as prices fluctuate.
Some of the bus routes have gotten so crowded that the NFTA is rearranging schedules by adding more trips and lengthening routes to accommodate more riders. The new schedules are set to be announced at the end of this month.
“They are staying with it,” NFTA spokesman C. Douglas Hartmayer said. “They are finding it convenient. They are finding they can save money.”
Figures for the past couple of weeks, when local gas prices fell about 20 cents per gallon, aren’t available yet. But Hartmayer said the past year’s statistics show people will choose alternative transportation methods over their own gas-guzzling cars.
“You wouldn’t have that 2.7 million increase year over year if that was not the case,” he said.
Wally Smith, spokesman for AAA of Western and Central New York, pointed out that while prices are dropping, the Buffalo area has the second-most expensive gas average in the state.
“The only place higher is in New York City,” Smith said.
Wednesday, the American Automobile Association listed the average price of gas in the Buffalo area at $4.057. Last week, it was $4.14. A month ago, it was $4.271.
BuffaloGasPrices.com, a Web site that tracks cheap and expensive gas here, listed gas as low as $3.93 at Hi-Quality Petroleum on South Transit Road in South Lockport and $3.94 at BJ’s on Young Street in the Town of Tonawanda.
Nationally, the average price of a gallon of gas was $3.787 on Wednesday, according to AAA.
“That’s not good for [WNY] motorists,” Smith said, “but we’ve seen a decline, certainly, in the last month.”
There is no way to predict whether gas prices will continue to fall, Smith said. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, oil prices rebounded Wednesday, jumping to $116 a barrel from $113, after the government reported a bigger-than- expected drop in U. S. gasoline supplies.
But Smith said recent statistics show Americans are driving less and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
“It puts money right back in their pocket,” he said. “People have been practicing a lot of techniques to save gasoline. I think the American consumer and motorist will continue to keep those behaviors. . . . Who knows if and when those prices will go back up?”
Local commuters seem to concur.
Czechowski said a drop of 20 cents per gallon in gas prices isn’t enough to make her ditch her new routine of buying gas at reservations and cutting down on extraneous trips.
Tuesday, she said, she paid $3.79 a gallon for full service at a reservation gas station.
“It’s got to go back to two-something a gallon,” she said, before she stops worrying about gas prices.
Fire Capt. Carey said he believes the recent dip in prices won’t last. “I think this gas situation is going to be a problem for a while,” he said.
This spring, Carey got rid of the family’s conversion van and began making a 6-mile bike ride to and from Niagara Falls Firehouse 9 on Military Road.
Carey said he is enjoying his new two-wheel lifestyle.
“I really like riding the bike,” he said. “That’s something I’m going to continue.”
The lower prices won’t put him back behind the wheel of a car anytime soon, he said. However, he is looking into buying a fuel-efficient compact car this fall to get him through the winter.
Atwood and Ockler, who started car-pooling from their homes in Orchard Park and Colden, respectively, have found unexpected benefits to sharing the driving.
“It’s very convenient what we do right now,” Atwood said.
“The fact that Bob and I work together,” Ockler said, “it gives us an opportunity to discuss things without the risk of being interrupted in the office.”
News staff reporters Sandra Tan and Steve Watson and the Associated Press contributed to this story. e-mail: mbecker@buffnews.com
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