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Controlling the Cruise: An Exercise in Slow(er) Motion
By Edward Shanahan
A little experiment in cruise control.
Angry about gasoline prices? Can’t fight Big Oil? Can’t prod oil-producing countries like Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Mexico to ship us more product? Can’t get automakers to build more fuel-efficient vehicles? Can’t prevent India and China from developing modern economies and consuming the oil we insist we so rightly deserve instead? Can’t stop the whipsawing of the oil markets by global speculators?
Not many ways to fight back are there?
Oh, you drive less and rely more on unreliable mass transit where it exists at all.
But have you ever noticed that those who probably crybaby most about what they are paying for gasoline are continuing to drive their cars at reckless speeds - 70, 75, 80 miles on the interstates? They don’t get it.
While oil prices are high and on track to climb into the stratosphere, we have a choice over which we do have total control. Drive slower. It’s a known way to cut down on gasoline consumption.
Last weekend on a trip to New York City to attend a play involving two grandchildren, I tried to see what easing up on the gas pedal over a long stretch could actually accomplish.
We don’t have the most efficient vehicle, a 2006 Honda CRV, sort of a junior SUV, but its performance depends somewhat on how you drive it.
So between Northampton and New York City, a distance of about 150-plus miles, I locked in the cruise control at between 57 and 59 miles an hour for much of the trip.
As a result by the time I reached the Merritt Parkway in New York State I was averaging for the trip 34.8 miles per gallon of gasoline, according to my Honda high-tech instrument panel.
At that speed I was able after the tunnel outside New Haven to pass only a single car – a red Cadillac with a Florida license plate and driven by a geezer about my age.
By the time I hit New York City my average gas mileage had slipped to 34.1 and by the time we pulled up at 350 Cabrini Blvd. In Washington Heights the gauge read 33.9 mpg. Pretty good. All it required was restraint, patience, lots of small talk and constant monitoring of the instrument panel.
The next day the trip home was no more eventful, although I did pass a second car and on the approach to Springfield I crept past a small white truck, I had to be more restrained in my driving on the return trip because a small amount of New York City driving had reduced my mpg figure to 30.1. Thus, I had to cut my cruising speed to 55 mph, which is the posted speed on the Merritt and Wilbur Ross parkways. Meanwhile, cars sped by us at bewildering, even dangerous, speeds and in the process priceless gasoline was wasted.
I was able to recover some of the lost mileage gains on the Wilbur Cross and then in I-91, so that when we arrived back in Florence at 9 Greeley Ave., I had the mpg figure up to 31.6. The total miles driven were 326.7.
That required 10.33 gallons of gasoline and at $3.53 a gallon the trip cost $36.36.
But, of course, the pleasure of seeing Benjamin and Ellie performing magically, in our view, at the Pied Piper Theater was worth it at any price.
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Farewell to Three Northampton Stalwarts:
Bob August, Sam Freedman, Ted Squires
By Edward Shanahan
One week, three obituaries, and three men from varied walks of life pass on.
It is so interesting to recall encounters with all of them; they probably never met each other, had completely different interests and backgrounds, and yet lived within the same community at one time or another.
It was a result of our decades-long annual and always frustrating quest for the perfect Christmas tree that first took us to Nasami Farm in Whately that we first ran into its proprietor Bob August and his wife Nancy. It was likely a warm sunny late October weekend that he led us through his field of live trees. The experience was so perfect and the resulting tree that we tagged so uniformly good when it was cut and taken home several weeks later, that we returned year after year.
Bob’s meticulous record-keeping allowed us to determine each year what species of tree we had selected previously and enabled us to figure out what kind of tree we might try next. Our leisurely walks through the fields with him and discussions about tree farming were always informative and seemed to convey the sense he was trustworthy steward of the productive land he was so fortunate to own.
Gradually, the tree farm expanded to become a nursery and, as a result, we enjoy having around our home perennial reminders – in the form of rhododendrons and azaleas and butterfly bushes - and of Bob and Nasami Farm. Read the rest of the story....
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Big Gas Fights Back
Upside Down Energy Economy
More Costly for the Consumer
By Edward Shanahan
We think the state Atty. Gen Martha Coakley has it just right. She urges the state Department of Public Utilities to reject a rate increase for Bay State Gas. And why not?
The company that provides natural gas to this region is the product of decades of mergers and is now a vast conglomerate operating throughout the country.
Now consumers in Massachusetts are being asked to pay more to heat their homes because, as the price of natural gas has increased sharply over the last few years, savvy homeowners have reduced their consumption. To conserve energy is good; to consume it is bad, we have been told.
Conservation is the best way to fight the utilities since we have long ago concluded we can’t expect much help from the regulatory agencies that are supposed to be put the public brakes on utility monopolies.
It turns out lowered consumption is terrible bottom-line news for the company, so what it is trying to do now is punish the customer by asking for some $7.5 million in new and compensatory higher rates. That never has been the underlying economic principle of supply and demand. When demand goes down, prices fall accordingly.
But not in protected monopolies. I can’t shop around in order to lower my monthly bill, which during the last five winter months averaged $407. I have no choice but to get my natural gas from Bay State.
AG Coakley notes that the newest gambit by the company for more money comes on the heels of rate increases already granted in 2005 amounting to some $25 million that will be charged to customers well into the future.
She says the newest rate request is “unprecedented and unjustified,” which might have characterized countless rate increases through the ages, even when consumption was increasing, not falling.
Good for Coakley, good for the prudent customers who are turning down the thermostat and trying to save on energy use. Shame on Bay State for penalizing those who conserve and shiver while doing so. Their response would afflict the afflicted and comfort their stockholders. It’s been ever thus.
_______________________________________________
Obama’s Army Occupies
Northampton’s Downtown
Several hundred partisans of Sen. Barack Obama’s quest for the Democratic nomination to run for President clogged the downtown intersection of Main, Pleasant and King Streets on Saturday April 19, the actual date on which Patriots’ Day was traditionally celebrated in the Commonwealth.
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EDITOR'S NOTE:
Go to our archives to read recent stories about a weekend of celebration, politics and opera, the victim of a housing squeeze, the decoupling of news and paper, and the Northampton CPA's debut disbursements.
Or, you may read all of our previous commentary—a rumination on the Pleasant Street Theater vs. the Academy of Music, an update on Forbes Library privacy issues and other notes and comments from the downstreet.net editor—in the archives.
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 downstreet.net©2001.
All rights reserved.
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