Gas costs fuel life style changes

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Driving force: Gas costs fuel life style changes

By Alison apRoberts

Bee Staff Writer (Published March 11, 2000) Rising gas prices drove Carol Toyama to get a part-time job.

"I'm working for the car," she said.

She and her husband were prepared for the $460 monthly payment to lease their $42,000 '99 Chevrolet Suburban. But they didn't realize they'd be paying through the nozzle for gas: $300 a month.

"We didn't factor in the gas," Toyama said. With one of the thirstiest sport utility vehicles around -- it gets about 13 miles to the gallon on city streets -- the cost is pumping the family budget dry.

Carol Toyama is part of a growing fleet of drivers changing their ways over the rising price of gas -- and worrying that it's going to keep on rising. The threat of $2 a gallon by summer has countless drivers fuming over fuel.

You know a topic is volatile when the funny guys of late-night television start pumping it for laughs: David Letterman joked that Puff Daddy can't afford to fill up his getaway car; Jay Leno explained that SUV now stands for "Stationary Utility Vehicle."

Carol Toyama brings her own sense of humor to her predicament at the pump.

More drivers may be pursuing alternate travel Calls for a "gasout" April 7 to 9 to protest high fuel prices are making the e-mail rounds. But are people ready to do without gas?

Indications show more people are pursuing or at least thinking about alternatives.

When the Sacramento Regional Transit District raised fares about 20 percent in January, it expected to see a 6 percent or 7 percent drop in ridership. That drop didn't materialize. During January, people took about 30,000 light-rail trips and 65,000 bus trips daily. More recent ridership figures are not yet available, according to Mike Wiley, director of customer services for the district.

More people are mentioning gas prices as the reason for calling the Rideshare line -- (800) COMMUTE (266- 6883) -- for car pool information, said Rebecca S. Johnson of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments.

Consumers were similarly urged to abstain from pumping last spring for one day. Gas stations noticed a drop in customers last year, but nobody went out of business over it. As of Thursday, a Web site, www.gasout.com, listed one sponsor, an Internet service provider.

For more information The Rideshare program: Free service for area commuters interested in car pooling: www.sacog.org/ride/ or call (800) COMMUTE (266-6883). Sacramento Regional Transit District: Service information for 69 bus routes and the light-rail system can be found at www.sacrt.com/ or call (916) 321-BUSS (321-2877).

Fuel economy ratings: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site has comprehensive ratings of fuel performance by vehicle make and model, including estimated annual gasoline costs. www.fueleconomy.gov/

National average fuel prices: The Oil Price Information Service runs an industry Web site that offers members detailed information. But anyone can hop on the site at www.opisnet.com and check out the weekly average prices listed at the top right corner.

-- Alison apRoberts "It's a hog, but I love it," she said of her family room on wheels. She calls it "the ultimate suburban assault vehicle." Her kids call it "Maxi-Me" in homage to the Mini-Me character of the Austin Powers movie.

Toyama's not heading down the long, bitter road of buyer's remorse. Being cranky isn't her style, and there's a lot to like about the Suburban: It fits seven passengers (or half of her son's middle-school golf team and clubs) with no squishing. And there are the heated front seats, nine cup holders and three cigarette-lighter plug-ins for television and other electronica. It's second in size only to the Ford Excursion.

Toyama is no super commuter; she's just another owner-operator "Mom Taxi" driver, with three kids ages 8, 11 and 13. This is a working car with the dusty windows and the Dorito chip shrapnel on the floor to prove it.

Most of her driving is within several miles of the family's home in the South Land Park area: to the kids' schools in the morning and back again in the afternoon, to ballet and Japanese lessons, on school field trips and Girl Scout outings (we're in the midst of the high-mileage delivery season for all those Thin Mints, Tagalogs and Samoas).

"I'm not one of those Land Park ladies driving around in a Lexus SUV," Toyama said.

She doesn't even carry enough cash to fill up the car's 42-gallon tank. She uses gas charge cards.

After picking up her daughters, Bess, 11, and Lucy, 8, from school, she stops to fill up at a 76 station. The price is $1.67 and nine-tenths of a cent for a gallon of regular. She runs up $35 for a half tank.

The price has made Toyama think twice about some of her driving habits. She broke out the bikes recently and rode with the kids to school. If prices really hit $2 by summer, she said the family may reconsider a planned car trip to Mississippi. Staying home during spring break is looking more appealing too.

The road much traveled

Wes Hubbart would like to hear the government talk tough with the fuel industry.

"As much as government seems to intrude, they won't stand up to the oil companies," Hubbart said. "They want to regulate your TV and bottled water but they won't do anything about something people are held hostage by."

He and his wife, Connie, feel strapped as long-distance commuters. They drive together every day about 55 miles each way to state jobs in town from their rural home in Sheridan in Placer County. They drive a Ford Taurus sedan that gets about 25 miles to the gallon.

In the land of the free and the brave and the mobile, driving has the status of an entitlement to Hubbart: "I do believe the ability to travel is a right not given by the states but by a higher authority."

There aren't a lot of options for the Hubbarts as long as they live on their 10-acre country spread. They looked into taking a commuter van from Lincoln, but that would have added an hour on to an already long day. (The Hubbarts leave home at 7:15 a.m. and get back about 6:30 p.m.) The couple also drop off their two daughters at a school about halfway in to work.

"Basically there's no behavior I can modify; we don't drive much beyond commuting," Hubbart said.

Family plans to drive to Montana this summer may evaporate quicker than a drop of gasoline: "We won't do that if gas is $2 a gallon," Hubbart said.

High-mileage education

"I'm one of those roads scholars," Cameron Billeci said. He drives about 12 miles from his home in east Sacramento to Cordova High School every weekday to teach U.S. history. A couple of other nights a week, he drives another 14 miles or so to Sierra College in Rocklin, where he teaches journalism. Other nights, he heads over to California State University, Sacramento, where he is studying for an administrative credential.

The hardest lesson so far: Gas prices can and do go up. In October, he bought a Ford F150 pickup truck that gets about 20 miles to the gallon. Gas cost about $1.20 a gallon then, and he budgeted about $1,500 a year for it. Now, he figures he'll spend more than $2,000.

"I would have bought a smaller car if I had known," he said. He had been planning to drive back East this summer. Now, he's not sure he wants to pay for the gas to go.

It's no consolation to feel he should have known better. At 42, he remembers the dark days of the gas crisis of the '70s.

"I remember the gas lines; I remember the alternating days. I remember the fights," he said. "This is like a reminder."

Rock 'n' petrol

The Groovie Ghoulies know just how hard it is to afford a rock 'n' roll lifestyle with high gas prices.

The Sacramento rock 'n' roll band spends seven or eight months of the year on the road. The band's Ford Econoline van is just 2 years old, but it already has 60,000 miles on it. It's a V-8 and gets less than 15 miles to the gallon, but it takes a few cylinders to haul four or five people, equipment and a drum kit.

"You just bite the bullet," said Kepi, the group's singularly named vocalist and sometime bass player.

You can't be a real touring band without traveling, especially when you make recordings with such road-worthy names as "Travels With My Amp" (to be released next month).

Kepi admitted to some stirrings of dread at the thought of filling the van on Friday, when the group was set to head out to Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, a pop-music mecca. From there, they plan to swing through New Orleans and Oklahoma City before coming home to rest up for a national tour in May.

"It costs over $60 easily to fill the van," Kepi said. "We need our own refinery."

Love may be the usual source of anguish in pop songs, but you can find plenty of pathos and pain these days at the pump

http://www.sacbee.com/ib/news/ib_news03_20000311.html



-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 11, 2000


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