I have to come clean about all the driving I’ve been doing. Personal matters have necessitated several targeted trips, and an ongoing relationship with the rental car company. And while I haven’t left Maine since returning from Bulgaria three years ago, it’s a big state, and without a car it can be difficult to get there from here.

Every year I rent a car maybe half a dozen times. This year I’m likely to double that. It’s still cheaper than owning one. The break-even point is at about 75 days. 

So yes, I’ve noticed the gas prices. I’ve paid them. I’ve winced at the pump when the cost to fill the rental car comes out close to the rental itself. And I remain thankful that I don’t use a car to commute to a job, or to run small errands, and that I live in a place where car ownership is not the necessity most Americans think it is.

Everybody likes to blame politicians for gas prices. Even people with environmental bumper stickers on their hybrids are going to take a financial hit if they live out in the country and drive more than 20 miles to and from work. But as I careened down Interstate 95 at more than seventy miles an hour, with other humans whizzing past me in their own isolation chambers every few minutes, I reflected that the price of fuel is but a skim of oil on the surface of a deeper problem.

The interstate highway system was born the year before I was, with the stroke of a pen by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Funded almost entirely by taxpayers, the Federal-Aid Highway Act was a massive subsidy to the automobile and truck industries. It spawned suburbs, shopping malls, and bedroom communities miles from centers of employment. Cheap gas and postwar prosperity brought two cars in the driveway, cars as graduation presents, and the expectation of a lifetime of car ownership.

Sixty years on, many of us are locked into lives that depend on our ability to get to destinations quickly, sometimes on short notice. Some of us drive great distances to work; others juggle busy schedules punctuated with drive-through breakfast and banking, and grocery stores far from home surrounded by parking lots. Whatever your situation, if you depend on your car on a daily basis, you are at the mercy of gas prices. You have to pay them. No one likes feeling helpless.

The last time gas prices spiked, in 2008, Americans looked for alternatives. Public transportation saw a significant increase in ridership. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, right? If the bus fare is competitive with the price of gas, you get to vote with your dollars. But this time around, we had the pandemic. People withdrew into their cars and drove faster and more dangerously – with bad results for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Public transportation is the future, though, and if the high cost of gas spurs a few more Americans to give up their cars, then I can live with it. As I’ve noted in previous posts, American gas prices are lower than in most of the world. We should be paying more – gas taxes are at a historic low. I’ll pay six bucks a gallon to fill up my rental car if some of the money is invested in public transit. I think a lot of us want to live less car-dependent lives. People just need a little encouragement. 

Still, it’s painful in the short term for those who have little choice but to drive. I sympathize. I’ve been there. But the problem isn’t the cost of gas. It’s the cost of our automotive lifestyle.

Note: I cribbed the title of this post from The High Cost of Free Parking, a book by UCLA economist Donald Shoup. He argues that subsidized parking encourages more parking lots, which encourages zoning friendly to cars and hostile to pedestrians. This is a gross oversimplification, but you get the picture. By keeping gas prices artificially low, we have created a car-dependent culture, and escaping from it is like trying to escape from Alcatraz.