Hating every minute of it, Americans are slowly learning to live with high gasoline prices. For a nation accustomed to cheap fuel, big vehicles and sprawling suburbs, the adjustments are wrenching.
Florian Bialas, a retiree who lives near Chicago, sold his Pontiac Sunfire for $3,000 and plans to give up his license when it expires in September. “I can walk to most places where I need to go,” he said.
And Debbie Gloyd of Cleveland has parked her Chrysler Concorde and started taking the bus to work. “I can’t afford these gas prices,” she said. “They’re insane.”
With the nationwide average price for regular gasoline closing rapidly on $4 a gallon, — and even higher in such states as Illinois and California — people are bracing for a summer of expensive driving.
As the Memorial Day holiday approaches, starting the summer driving season, record prices are provoking dread and upsetting vacation plans. A recent survey by AAA, the automobile club, found a rare year-on-year decline, of 1 percent, in the number of people planning to travel this summer.
Interviews with more than 70 people across the country suggested that the adjustments they were making, mental and otherwise, would last well beyond the summer. Americans have started trading their gas guzzlers for smaller cars, making fewer trips to the mall, and wherever possible, riding public transportation to work.
For years, it was not clear whether rising prices would ever prompt Americans to use less gas. But a combination of record prices, the slowing economy and a tight credit market have beaten consumers down.
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Gasoline demand is headed for the first annual drop in 17 years, according to government estimates.
The Transportation Department reported Friday that in March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles than in March 2007, a decline of 4.3 percent.
It is the first time since 1979 that traffic has dropped from one March to the next, and the month-on-month percentage decline is the largest since record keeping began in 1942.
High gasoline prices, plastered on 20-foot signs from coast to coast, are turning into a barometer of the country’s mood.
“The psychology has changed,” said Sara Johnson, an economist at Global Insight. “People have recognized that prices are not going down and are adapting to higher energy costs. It’s a capitulation.”
At Sim’s Bowl and Lounge in Des Plaines, Ill., Robin Sebastian, 51, who tends bar there, sounded bitter the other day after recalling that she had just paid $46 to fill half a tank in her 1994 Buick Regal.
“There are too many politicians’ hands in our pockets, and too many crooks in the oil companies,” said Sebastian, an Army veteran who served in the Persian Gulf.
“I’m all for helping other countries, but we need to help our people here in the U.S. first.”