Interesting no one even mentions anything close to my proposal:
Lower the national speed limit to 30 mph for private ground transportation.
That would:
- Directly cut gasoline consumption as vehicles are far more fuel efficient at 30 mph than 60 mph.
- Directly cut air and other pollutions.
- Reduce long distance driving due to time constraints
- Increase the demand for public transportation due to time savings issues
- Reduce the needed safety features as you can’t hurt yourself all that much at 30 mph
- Lead to much smaller cars and therefore better ‘packaging’ in the cities, reducing traffic and parking demands
- Change relative real estate values currently distorted by relatively cheap fuel
The reduction in consumption could be up to 5 million bpd in the US alone, which would:
- Provide the net supply shock capable of reducing crude and refined product prices
- Improve our real terms of trade and restore our quality of life
- Increase national security by reducing dependence on foreign oil
- Slow environmental degradation
It’s a political choice- ration by price as we are currently doing, or use other methods, some of which we already do, such as fuel economy standards.
This proposal simply adds the price of ‘time’ to burning gasoline for all private transportation, thereby making fuel efficient, cleaner, less resource intensive, alternative transportation more attractive.
Feel free to try to make it happen if you agree!
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