MODERN TIMES
Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 8 December
2007
The real cost of
gasoline
It's
getting more difficult to get around, and it's not just old age. My eye doctor, dentist, and physician
have moved out of central Fayetteville, where I live, to the suburbs. Clothing stores, Lewis Brothers'
Hardware, and Woolworths vanished from downtown decades ago with the coming of
the mall and big box stores. Two
restaurants that used to be a short walk away have vanished along with much
else on North College Avenue. For
35 years I have commuted to work daily on a bicycle, allowing us to be a
one-car family, saving $8000 a year, and providing fun and exercise for me, but
this life style becomes more difficult as downtown empties out.
This
situation, which has been endured for decades by city dwellers all over
America, is a result of automobile dependence. To add insult to injury, it turns out, as we'll see in a
moment, that the tab for this and much other damage caused by cars is not
picked up by drivers but is instead paid by everyone, regardless of their
driving habits.
An
economic problem is at the root of automobile overdependence: Pump prices
differ radically from gasoline's "real cost"--including hidden
costs. The real cost of gasoline has
been tallied by numerous studies, with results on the order of an astonishing
trillion dollars per year of costs that Americans must pay but that are not
paid by drivers. One such study,
"The Real Price of Gasoline," was published in 1998 by the International
Center for Technology Assessment.
ICTA is a non-profit, bi-partisan organization that provides the public
with full assessments and analyses of technological impacts on society. I'll report the ICTA results in 2007
dollars.
First,
there are numerous federal and state tax breaks to the oil industry, totaling
between $11 and $22 billion annually.
The
government also hands out half a dozen subsidies for expenses such as research,
development, and export-import activities, totaling $3 billion annually.
The
annual cost of building and maintaining roads and highways is much more than
the amount collected in user fees (gasoline taxes, other taxes and tolls). About half of the bill, or a whopping
$45 to $140 billion, is footed by the general public.
The
annual cost of defending petroleum resources in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere
is estimated at $70 to $121 billion in this 1998 study, or one-quarter to
two-fifths of the defense budget at that time.
The
annual cost of the government-maintained strategic petroleum reserve is $7
billion.
General
taxpayers shoulder most of the burden of police, fire, ambulance, and other
municipal services for automobile users, resulting in $34 to $48 billion in
annual hidden costs.
The
subsidy for parking is a staggering $135 to $250 billion in annual costs not
borne by drivers. That works out
to about $500 to $800 that each of us pays every year, in the form of general
taxes and higher prices for goods and services (which must include the cost of
parking in their prices), for "free" parking. A little thought shows that this is a
reasonable figure: The cost of
parking in a typical for-profit lot is at least $8 per day, or $3000 per year; there are several times
more parking spaces than cars in America; the area that a typical county
devotes to parking is larger than 1,000 football fields; building costs for
decked parking runs around $15,000 per space.
U.S.
dependence on foreign oil damages our balance of payments and has other harmful
economic effects estimated at $6 to $12 billion annually.
Automobile-caused
air pollution causes immense damage.
Annual health costs are at least $37 billion and perhaps as much as $677
billion. Annual crop damage,
decreased visibility, and building damage total $12 to $74 billion. The annual U.S. cost of the
automobile's share of global warming was estimated at $4 to $35 billion in 1998
(it would be considerably more today), a figure that could become astronomical
in the future. Water pollution,
noise pollution, and wastes such as 250 million thrown-away tires every year
cost an annual $18 to $57 billion.
Transportation
analysts have quantified the costs of automobile-caused sprawl. Costs include increased commute times,
needed government-paid infrastructure for sprawling development, fragmented
wildlife populations, ugliness that degrades property values, degraded public
spaces, reduced community interaction, and much more, for a total of $205 to
$306 billion annually.
The
grand total of all these hidden subsidies that we all pay to support America's
automobile habit is $587 to $1752 billion annually. That's about $2000 to $6000 for every American.
These
dollar costs amount to $4.13 to $12.34 per gallon of gasoline in costs that are
borne by Americans but not charged to automobile drivers. If drivers paid these costs at the
pump, gasoline prices would be about $7 to $15 per gallon. As a check on these figures, in Britain,
which taxes drivers for at least some of these costs, gasoline prices recently
hit $8 per gallon.
It's
clear that cars do not begin to pay their own way in America and that all of
us, drivers and non-drivers alike, pay dearly to make up the difference. This market distortion is at the root
of the over-dependence on automobiles that is destroying downtown Fayetteville
and much else that we hold dear.
Our extreme subsidization of driving has given us what is surely the
industrialized world's worst, and ironically most expensive, transportation
system. The alternatives are
numerous and obvious: trains,
buses, bicycling, walking, compact cities, gasoline taxes, and so forth. It's time to get unhooked from the
automobile.