Gov. Pat Quinn signed a couple of bills into law on Thursday meant to crack down on people who are so absorbed about themselves that they can’t bear to be away from their cellular telephones, Blackberrys, or the Internet.
Basically put, police are now going to have the authority to issue a lot more tickets to people who insist on talking on their cellphones while driving through a construction zone, or insist on sending text messages or using their tiny devices to check the Internet while also driving a car.
NOW I’M NOT about to argue that those people who would be talking on the phone while they should be paying attention to the road to ensure they don’t hit a construction worker aren’t knuckleheads.
They are.
But should it really be a surprise that some people think it is their right to whip out that cellphone and talk to whomever they want whenever they want? Personally, I have a niece who once berated me for not answering my cellphone when she called me.
She is 6. But she and her brothers are growing up in a world where it seems alien to them not to be able to reach someone at the exact moment they want, regardless of where people are.
SO TO WHAT degree are these new laws that Quinn approved during ceremonies at Northeastern Illinois University contradictory to the public mood?
In fact, the whole point of modern technology often is to make people accessible anywhere, and to make it possible for them to set their own environments so they can ignore their surroundings.
It would seem that these new laws could be seen as the desperate attempt of old fogies to impose some old way of thinking of things on the modern life they want technology to create.
I’m not defending these people. Because at heart, I’m an old fart and I take some pride in it.
I THINK A significant problem in our society today is that we have too many people who are wrapped up in themselves to the point that they can’t break away from whatever kind of device they carry.
It is almost like they are not alive when they are not hooked in to their particular device. At the very least, the moment when they have to shut down is the end of the day for them, rather than the moment when real life can begin.
I think that is sad. But I’m sure they’re about to respond that I need to get real, and that it is no more difficult to talk on a cellphone while driving than it is to listen to the radio. Of course, it would have to be Sirius satellite radio, since only old farts listen to “terrestrial” radio broadcasts.
At least that’s what my brother (who has a subscription so he can listen to Howard Stern and to Steven Van Zandt’s “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” music program) tells me.
PERSONALLY, I WAS kind of shocked to learn of the General Assembly’s actions this spring that passed these two bills that Quinn signed into law. I would have thought it already would have been illegal in Illinois to do the things that the new laws say are now illegal.
Seriously, what kind of gibberish-inspired message is all that important that it must be sent from a moving vehicle?
And in the cases where there is a legitimate emergency, it really is all too easy to pull over to the side of the road.
I recently had such an incident where a telephone call I placed to a government official for an interview was returned while I was driving on an Interstate highway. I pulled over to the side of the road for about 10 minutes – which is what it took to conduct that particular interview.
I WASN’T FOOLISH enough to try to ask questions, take notes and drive an automobile simultaneously. I know I would have wound up becoming a three-graf news brief about an auto fatality on the Interstate had I tried.
So I can appreciate the modern-day convenience of a cellphone in that it allowed me to leave the “office” to take care of other business without missing calls.
But I have come to accept the fact that there is a whole new generation developing that isn’t the least bit like me – who only got around to starting to use a cellphone about two years ago and is writing this particular commentary on a laptop computer I have owned for nearly seven years. They are going to complain about Quinn’s actions today for some time.
While I appreciate how much writing and editing has been made easier by computers (my earliest published work was written on Smith/Corona, and occasionally I still dig out a typewriter to create a rough draft), I’m not addicted to these devices.
I CAN HONESTLY say that one of the high points of my day every day is the moment when I am finished using my laptop computer (to write, send and receive e-mail and access various sites on the Internet) and can shut it down.
Because that means my “life” for the day can finally begin.
-30-
Showing posts with label automobile travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label automobile travel. Show all posts
Friday, August 7, 2009
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Is $6.50/hr for downtown parking meant to scare motorists out of the Loop?
I’m starting to wonder if Chicago city officials perceive parking meters downtown the same way that most governments view tobacco products.
Whenever a government entity raises its tobacco tax, there usually is a concession that some people will quit smoking because they won’t be able to afford the increased cost of cigarettes – which is seen as a health benefit for society as a whole.
DO CITY OFFICIALS secretly hope that the idea of charging people up to $6.50 per hour when they park along downtown streets will discourage them from bringing their cars into the Loop, thereby improving the area’s traffic flow?
I’m not making that figure up. The City Council is expected to hold a special session Thursday to consider a measure that was rammed through a committee earlier this week – one that would turn over parking meters in the city from control of the Department of Revenue to a private company that would pay Chicago city government $1.2 billion.
Under the proposal being considered by the City Council, parking meters would get standardized rates, and rates would be increased annually. That is how meters that now charge about $0.25 per hour now will go up to $1 per hour come next month, and will be as high as the aforementioned $6.50 figure.
City officials tell reporter-types that they would want to use about half the money paid by the private company to balance the city budget for the upcoming year (the deal that was approved last month and included layoffs for more than 600 city employees).
I’M SURE CITY officials, including Mayor Richard M. Daley, like the idea of some private entity paying them a set fee, rather than having to rely on the ebb and flow of parking revenues for the next five years.
It allows the city to know exactly how much money it can expect from parking.
So what would the city care if the thought of such a high rate (it’s a good thing that modern parking meters take credit and debit cards, or else having to carry nearly $20 in small change for three hours of parking along a downtown street would weigh people down too much) winds up scaring some people away from driving their cars downtown.
The city still gets its money, and it becomes the problem of the private company to figure out how to achieve enough revenue to make operating the city’s parking meters profitable for them.
AND IF FEWER cars downtown means it is easier for people to move about on foot, then perhaps there is a plus for urban dwellers and travelers.
I have to confess something. While I enjoy downtown Chicago as much as anyone else, I can’t remember the last time I took my car down there.
One of the advantages of my current residence is that it is within walking distance of a train station that can take me to the Loop anytime I want to go there. Once there, the CTA continues to be helpful in getting about, along with the occasional taxicab (that is, if I can’t just walk there – that’s what legs are for).
I honestly don’t understand why anyone really feels the need to deal with the already-high prices of parking meters in the Loop, or those downtown parking garages whose rates also are going up.
IN FACT, ABOUT the only time in my life that I ever drove into downtown Chicago on a regular basis was back in my earliest days with the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago, where riding around in my car from assignment to assignment was part of my job, and my day always involved checking in with the “main office” in the old Jeweler’s Building at Wabash and Wacker.
That was about the only time I ever got parking tickets on a regular basis – finding a “legal” spot in front of the building so I could run in-and-out was difficult, so it became easier to just “take” the occasional parking ticket.
In fact, I recently used the Chicago Department of Revenue’s website to check my driver’s license number to see if I had managed to pay all those outstanding tickets.
As it turns out, I still have one ticket (from August of 1990) for parking illegally downtown. This particular ticket qualifies for the amnesty program the city is offering this month, and I probably will use that option to pay it off – mostly because I don’t want some overanxious city crew mistaking my car for one that can be “booted.”
MY POINT IN noting this anecdote is to point out the date – it has been just over 18 years since I last got a parking ticket. It may very well have been that long since I drove my own car into the downtown area.
Yet I don’t feel like my access to the area has been limited in any way. So I won’t suffer any sacrifice in avoiding a $6.50/hour parking meter fee, since I am already avoiding parking meter fees.
If more people took my view on the issue, this activity would be a moot point. Some company would wind up regretting getting involved in a deal with city government because not enough people would be parking at meters for them to generate enough money to meet their profit margins.
My question? How much would parking have to decline for the deal to become a money-loser for a private entity, and for Richard M. Daley to wind up looking like a genius for taking the $1.2 billion up front?
-30-
EDITOR’S NOTES: New Year, Memorial, Independence, Labor, Thanksgiving and Christmas days (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2008/12/aldermen-debate.html) will no longer be recognized as parking meter holidays, if a new deal is approved by the City Council on Thursday.
The whole world is watching (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b6850188-c0db-11dd-b0a8-000077b07658.html) as Chicago prepares to sell off operation of its nearly 36,000 parking meters to a group led by Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners.
The next time you wonder why it always takes government so long to do anything (such as approve a new airport for the Chicago area), keep in mind that this parking meter privatization (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1312003,chicago-parking-meter-privatize-approve-120308.article) did not exist publicly until this week. The City Council can act quickly when it is in their interest to do so.
Whenever a government entity raises its tobacco tax, there usually is a concession that some people will quit smoking because they won’t be able to afford the increased cost of cigarettes – which is seen as a health benefit for society as a whole.
DO CITY OFFICIALS secretly hope that the idea of charging people up to $6.50 per hour when they park along downtown streets will discourage them from bringing their cars into the Loop, thereby improving the area’s traffic flow?
I’m not making that figure up. The City Council is expected to hold a special session Thursday to consider a measure that was rammed through a committee earlier this week – one that would turn over parking meters in the city from control of the Department of Revenue to a private company that would pay Chicago city government $1.2 billion.
Under the proposal being considered by the City Council, parking meters would get standardized rates, and rates would be increased annually. That is how meters that now charge about $0.25 per hour now will go up to $1 per hour come next month, and will be as high as the aforementioned $6.50 figure.
City officials tell reporter-types that they would want to use about half the money paid by the private company to balance the city budget for the upcoming year (the deal that was approved last month and included layoffs for more than 600 city employees).
I’M SURE CITY officials, including Mayor Richard M. Daley, like the idea of some private entity paying them a set fee, rather than having to rely on the ebb and flow of parking revenues for the next five years.
It allows the city to know exactly how much money it can expect from parking.
So what would the city care if the thought of such a high rate (it’s a good thing that modern parking meters take credit and debit cards, or else having to carry nearly $20 in small change for three hours of parking along a downtown street would weigh people down too much) winds up scaring some people away from driving their cars downtown.
The city still gets its money, and it becomes the problem of the private company to figure out how to achieve enough revenue to make operating the city’s parking meters profitable for them.
AND IF FEWER cars downtown means it is easier for people to move about on foot, then perhaps there is a plus for urban dwellers and travelers.
I have to confess something. While I enjoy downtown Chicago as much as anyone else, I can’t remember the last time I took my car down there.
One of the advantages of my current residence is that it is within walking distance of a train station that can take me to the Loop anytime I want to go there. Once there, the CTA continues to be helpful in getting about, along with the occasional taxicab (that is, if I can’t just walk there – that’s what legs are for).
I honestly don’t understand why anyone really feels the need to deal with the already-high prices of parking meters in the Loop, or those downtown parking garages whose rates also are going up.
IN FACT, ABOUT the only time in my life that I ever drove into downtown Chicago on a regular basis was back in my earliest days with the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago, where riding around in my car from assignment to assignment was part of my job, and my day always involved checking in with the “main office” in the old Jeweler’s Building at Wabash and Wacker.
That was about the only time I ever got parking tickets on a regular basis – finding a “legal” spot in front of the building so I could run in-and-out was difficult, so it became easier to just “take” the occasional parking ticket.
In fact, I recently used the Chicago Department of Revenue’s website to check my driver’s license number to see if I had managed to pay all those outstanding tickets.
As it turns out, I still have one ticket (from August of 1990) for parking illegally downtown. This particular ticket qualifies for the amnesty program the city is offering this month, and I probably will use that option to pay it off – mostly because I don’t want some overanxious city crew mistaking my car for one that can be “booted.”
MY POINT IN noting this anecdote is to point out the date – it has been just over 18 years since I last got a parking ticket. It may very well have been that long since I drove my own car into the downtown area.
Yet I don’t feel like my access to the area has been limited in any way. So I won’t suffer any sacrifice in avoiding a $6.50/hour parking meter fee, since I am already avoiding parking meter fees.
If more people took my view on the issue, this activity would be a moot point. Some company would wind up regretting getting involved in a deal with city government because not enough people would be parking at meters for them to generate enough money to meet their profit margins.
My question? How much would parking have to decline for the deal to become a money-loser for a private entity, and for Richard M. Daley to wind up looking like a genius for taking the $1.2 billion up front?
-30-
EDITOR’S NOTES: New Year, Memorial, Independence, Labor, Thanksgiving and Christmas days (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2008/12/aldermen-debate.html) will no longer be recognized as parking meter holidays, if a new deal is approved by the City Council on Thursday.
The whole world is watching (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b6850188-c0db-11dd-b0a8-000077b07658.html) as Chicago prepares to sell off operation of its nearly 36,000 parking meters to a group led by Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners.
The next time you wonder why it always takes government so long to do anything (such as approve a new airport for the Chicago area), keep in mind that this parking meter privatization (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1312003,chicago-parking-meter-privatize-approve-120308.article) did not exist publicly until this week. The City Council can act quickly when it is in their interest to do so.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Gasoline price dropped “below” $3 right before my very eyes. Will it last?
Gasoline prices are on the decline these days, and I had the strangest example of getting “ripped off” at the pump.
I was driving Wednesday afternoon around the area south of Chicago, and I happened to notice I could use gas in the car when I approached a Speedway station/convenience store on Lincoln Highway at Harlem Avenue (I’m not sure if I was IN Frankfort, Ill., or just outside of it).
BECAUSE THE STATION was on the Will County side of the street (literally, Cook County was just a few yards away), the taxes configured lower, so I paid $3.03 a gallon. I was able to fill up my car (a Saturn SL2) for just over $20.
As I pulled away from the station, I felt good. That was the lowest price I had paid in gasoline quite possibly all year. So I went about my business in the land where Joliet is just a short drive away.
About a half-hour later, my business was complete, and I was retracing my route to return to the civilized land of Chicago when I passed the same gas station. During that time, the price dropped.
It was now $2.999 per gallon. Admittedly, that gets rounded off to $3 when it comes to paying the cashier. But seeing that price gave me a jolt – both in that it was the first time in a long time that I had actually seen a gas station offer gasoline for a price starting with a 2 and because I felt a second of disgust that I had missed the chance to pay that lower price.
JUST OUT OF curiosity, I stopped, went back into the gas station/convenience store and asked, and was told by the manager that he had just finished resetting the pumps. He had literally in mid-day been given the approval to lower the price yet again.
Now I understand that gasoline is NOT the significant part of the business for these local franchise operators who have gas pumps as part of their store.
Offering me cheap gas was supposed to entice me to come into the store and buy some of the junk food, overpriced office supplies and other goods that he was peddling (and in fact, I bought a newspaper – the Joliet Herald News, out of curiosity as to what was happening locally).
For all I know, the store made more of a profit off my $0.75 for the Herald News than it did off my $22.36 I paid to fill up my gas (which considering that at the worst point I was paying nearly $40 to fill up was a good price).
I HAVE ALWAYS realized that it was not the gas station operators who were getting rich in recent months, as gasoline prices soared over $4 per gallon, and even had some people speculating that we would someday see the $5 per gallon price at least in downtown Chicago proper (where gas always costs more), if not in all of Illinois.
All this came soaring to my mind when I read a Chicago Sun-Times account Thursday about the price of a barrel of oil dropping below $67, which is resulting in some stations being able to price gas at as little as $2.81 per gallon (the metropolitan area average is $3.22 per gallon, according to the Chicago Motor Club, and I know a Shell gas station located one block from where I live was charging on Thursday $3.19).
Could Alaron Trading Group really be correct when it told the Sun-Times that gas prices could be as low as $2.80 average across the Chicago area? That could mean the cheaper gas price places could be charging as little as $2.50 per gallon (perhaps more, if they’re really determined to get you inside their convenience stores to buy those rubbery hot dogs or greasy pizza slices that no one with sense should ever eat).
Now a part of me wants to be optimistic. Prices are going down. Perhaps a sense of rationality is returning to the market.
PERHAPS THOSE ANALYSTS who offer lofty opinions are correct when they say that oil companies saw how much people hated paying prices in the $4 range for gasoline that they learned to “drive smarter” and use less gas.
Oil companies are realizing that more gasoline will be sold, which results in more of a profit for the oil companies – if not necessarily for the local gas station owners.
But then I wonder what yet-to-occur event will trigger a paranoia that will result in gas prices soaring again. I can’t help but see the lesson being that people in this country are so dependent on their automobiles and other motor vehicles that they WILL knuckle under and pay up.
Plus, we as a society have now been put into a mental place where we think gasoline for less than $3 per gallon is cheap.
I CAN REMEMBER when people were outraged to pay more than $2 per gallon, although a part of me is lodged enough in the past that I think paying anything much over $1 for a gallon of gasoline is ridiculous. I’m just like those old-timers who remember when “penny candy” cost one cent.
So where do I go from here?
There are times when I’d love to be able to scrap my car altogether and rely on public transportation. There’s a certain convenience to not having to worry about gas prices or finding parking spaces that I enjoyed back in the times of my life when I did not have an automobile.
But then I look at the funding cuts to mass transit and the rising fares that result in lower ridership, which means more service cuts. The whole thing becomes an endless cycle, which means I’m stuck with the need for a car.
-30-
EDITOR’S NOTES: People purchasing gasoline at stations in downtown Chicago were paying (http://www.suntimes.com/business/1237603,CST-FIN-gas23.article) $3.99 per gallon earlier this week.
Dominick’s supermarkets are working with BP to offer gasoline discounts to people who shop (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/transportation/chicago-gas-dominicks-oct22,0,245367.story) at the two stores. It’s too bad I carry a card for Jewel supermarkets in my wallet.
Tensions in the Middle East, or even another hurricane in this country, could send (http://www.nwherald.com/articles/2008/10/22/news/local/doc48fef58389185909062465.txt) gasoline prices back on the rise again.
I was driving Wednesday afternoon around the area south of Chicago, and I happened to notice I could use gas in the car when I approached a Speedway station/convenience store on Lincoln Highway at Harlem Avenue (I’m not sure if I was IN Frankfort, Ill., or just outside of it).
BECAUSE THE STATION was on the Will County side of the street (literally, Cook County was just a few yards away), the taxes configured lower, so I paid $3.03 a gallon. I was able to fill up my car (a Saturn SL2) for just over $20.
As I pulled away from the station, I felt good. That was the lowest price I had paid in gasoline quite possibly all year. So I went about my business in the land where Joliet is just a short drive away.
About a half-hour later, my business was complete, and I was retracing my route to return to the civilized land of Chicago when I passed the same gas station. During that time, the price dropped.
It was now $2.999 per gallon. Admittedly, that gets rounded off to $3 when it comes to paying the cashier. But seeing that price gave me a jolt – both in that it was the first time in a long time that I had actually seen a gas station offer gasoline for a price starting with a 2 and because I felt a second of disgust that I had missed the chance to pay that lower price.
JUST OUT OF curiosity, I stopped, went back into the gas station/convenience store and asked, and was told by the manager that he had just finished resetting the pumps. He had literally in mid-day been given the approval to lower the price yet again.
Now I understand that gasoline is NOT the significant part of the business for these local franchise operators who have gas pumps as part of their store.
Offering me cheap gas was supposed to entice me to come into the store and buy some of the junk food, overpriced office supplies and other goods that he was peddling (and in fact, I bought a newspaper – the Joliet Herald News, out of curiosity as to what was happening locally).
For all I know, the store made more of a profit off my $0.75 for the Herald News than it did off my $22.36 I paid to fill up my gas (which considering that at the worst point I was paying nearly $40 to fill up was a good price).
I HAVE ALWAYS realized that it was not the gas station operators who were getting rich in recent months, as gasoline prices soared over $4 per gallon, and even had some people speculating that we would someday see the $5 per gallon price at least in downtown Chicago proper (where gas always costs more), if not in all of Illinois.
All this came soaring to my mind when I read a Chicago Sun-Times account Thursday about the price of a barrel of oil dropping below $67, which is resulting in some stations being able to price gas at as little as $2.81 per gallon (the metropolitan area average is $3.22 per gallon, according to the Chicago Motor Club, and I know a Shell gas station located one block from where I live was charging on Thursday $3.19).
Could Alaron Trading Group really be correct when it told the Sun-Times that gas prices could be as low as $2.80 average across the Chicago area? That could mean the cheaper gas price places could be charging as little as $2.50 per gallon (perhaps more, if they’re really determined to get you inside their convenience stores to buy those rubbery hot dogs or greasy pizza slices that no one with sense should ever eat).
Now a part of me wants to be optimistic. Prices are going down. Perhaps a sense of rationality is returning to the market.
PERHAPS THOSE ANALYSTS who offer lofty opinions are correct when they say that oil companies saw how much people hated paying prices in the $4 range for gasoline that they learned to “drive smarter” and use less gas.
Oil companies are realizing that more gasoline will be sold, which results in more of a profit for the oil companies – if not necessarily for the local gas station owners.
But then I wonder what yet-to-occur event will trigger a paranoia that will result in gas prices soaring again. I can’t help but see the lesson being that people in this country are so dependent on their automobiles and other motor vehicles that they WILL knuckle under and pay up.
Plus, we as a society have now been put into a mental place where we think gasoline for less than $3 per gallon is cheap.
I CAN REMEMBER when people were outraged to pay more than $2 per gallon, although a part of me is lodged enough in the past that I think paying anything much over $1 for a gallon of gasoline is ridiculous. I’m just like those old-timers who remember when “penny candy” cost one cent.
So where do I go from here?
There are times when I’d love to be able to scrap my car altogether and rely on public transportation. There’s a certain convenience to not having to worry about gas prices or finding parking spaces that I enjoyed back in the times of my life when I did not have an automobile.
But then I look at the funding cuts to mass transit and the rising fares that result in lower ridership, which means more service cuts. The whole thing becomes an endless cycle, which means I’m stuck with the need for a car.
-30-
EDITOR’S NOTES: People purchasing gasoline at stations in downtown Chicago were paying (http://www.suntimes.com/business/1237603,CST-FIN-gas23.article) $3.99 per gallon earlier this week.
Dominick’s supermarkets are working with BP to offer gasoline discounts to people who shop (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/transportation/chicago-gas-dominicks-oct22,0,245367.story) at the two stores. It’s too bad I carry a card for Jewel supermarkets in my wallet.
Tensions in the Middle East, or even another hurricane in this country, could send (http://www.nwherald.com/articles/2008/10/22/news/local/doc48fef58389185909062465.txt) gasoline prices back on the rise again.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Gas prices make my wallet less bloated
I can remember not all that long ago when I would actually make a special trip southeast whenever I wanted to fill my automobile’s tank with gasoline – I justified it on the grounds that a drive across State Line Road into Indiana could get me gasoline for under a dollar a gallon.
I was being a tightwad in making the drive – since I didn’t want to pay the “ridiculous” rate of about $1.20 per gallon, or up to $1.40 if I were to get gasoline at a station near downtown Chicago.
NOW, OF COURSE, it seems like an Impossible Dream (cue “Camelot”) that gasoline was ever that cheap. On Sunday, for the first time in my life, I paid over $4 for a gallon of gasoline. The $15 that once would have nearly filled my car’s gas tank got me barely more than a quarter of a tank, which will keep me moving for a little while.
And today, I learned that the $4.09 per gallon I paid makes me the norm for a Chicago-area motorist – the Lundberg Survey says $4.07 per gallon is the average in Chicago, which makes us the most expensive metropolitan area in the continental United States.
At that price, a trip to Indiana for gasoline comes to a waste of time, particularly since I don’t really notice any significant difference anymore between gasoline prices in Cook County and Lake County, Ind. I’m certainly not going to drive deep into rural Indiana in search of cheap gas. I’d use up more than I’d save.
To "dream, the impossible dream" that gasoline will ever be as cheap as these once-outrageous rates is the status of our automobile-dominated society.
This is just absurd. What logical reason is there for gasoline to be so expensive?
I DON’T WANT to hear about other countries where the price of gasoline has been higher than the equivalent of $4 per gallon for so long that they would dream of gas so cheap. Nor do I want to hear about places like Alaska or Hawaii, where basic commodities have to be shipped in and everything costs more.
I figure anyone who willingly lives in such an isolated place obviously gets so much pleasure from the locale that they accept higher gas and food costs as the price of living in “paradise.”
Besides, as of Monday, the average gasoline price in Anchorage was $3.89 per gallon, with some places selling it for as little as $3.83 per gallon. That’s the price we in much of the Chicago area were paying as recently as the end of last week.
Now some people will argue that these ridiculous gasoline prices are evidence that we ought to rely more on public transportation – which I have no problem with in theory. I am a big fan of the convenience of elevated trains and the Metra suburban commuter trains, which I have used whenever possible during my times living in Chicago proper and some of its surrounding suburbs.
BUT THERE ARE large swaths of the Chicago area to which public transportation is just not convenient (the stations are too far away, or the trains and buses run too infrequently).
Expanding service also isn’t a political reality, because there are too many people who perceive the issue of mass transit as some sort of liberal plot to take away a person’s automobile (just like some suspect the liberals want to take away their guns too!).
We are a car-based society. Why else have these ridiculous gasoline prices not caused a significant drop in the number of motorists?
People still have to get to work and to other places that are a part of their lives, and very few people live in communities where everything is within walking distance or a short bus ride away. I personally am working a job these days requiring me to make about a 20-minute drive, but would require something like two hours and three bus transfers to complete each way if I tried to do it with existing Chicago-area public transportation.
IT’S NOT PRACTICAL. For many people, it’s not possible – even if they wanted to take the bus (which many do not).
We’re hooked on cars, meaning we’re going to keep paying and paying these ridiculous prices (which don’t even make profits for the gas station owners – who are dependent on us buying overpriced slurpees, chips and lottery tickets in significant quantities in order to make a profit) for gasoline.
How about $5 per gallon? It’s not a ridiculous nightmare – it will be a reality, and the gasoline manufacturers know we will do little more than grumble every time we dig into our wallets to pay it.
We need serious relief on this issue. And I mean real relief, not some political hack spewing out rhetoric that amounts to nothing.
THAT IS WHY I actually gained a bit of respect for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama when the whole issue of gasoline prices came up during the campaign a few weeks ago and he was getting smacked around by his opponents for refusing to support talk of easing the federal government portion of the gasoline tax.
In theory, that would reduce the price of gasoline by a few pennies, and some people want to have dreams that those pennies would add up into significant dollars that would remain in the consumer’s wallet.
In reality, the amount is so small, that (based on the Obama campaign’s calculations) the total savings for a “typical” motorist would be about $20 – over the course of the entire summer of 2008.
In my car at the current gas price, $20 is about half a tank. For people who drive those SUV monstrosities to lug their kids around from activity to activity, $20 is as little as a quarter of a tank.
THAT PLAN, PUSHED in slightly different forms by Democrat Hillary R. Clinton and Republican John McCain, would not have offered serious tax relief, but the political people would have spun it to make it appear as though they were doing the American people some great favor.
What impressed me about Obama was that he remembered the “gasoline tax holiday” (that’s the political-speak way of making it sound so cute) that the Illinois General Assembly approved back in 2000 when gas prices were so out of control in this state that they were “threatening” to go over $2 per gallon (remember that?).
Obama voted for it, only to see the gasoline manufacturers boost their own prices so bolster their profit while keeping gas prices overall at the same level. He said he wishes he could have taken that vote back
This was probably one of the few times a public official (particularly one running for president) opening admitted to making a mistake. It is perhaps the only time that a public official appeared to have learned from his mistake – and hopefully will not repeat it again.
-30-
EDITOR’S NOTES: A lot of good it does me to know that gasoline in Tuscon, Ariz., goes for $3.48 per gallon, since I (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-gas-prices-web-may19,0,7796647.story) have no intention of moving there anytime soon.
For those of you willing to make a drive (and use up existing gasoline to find slightly-less expensive new gasoline), here is a place (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-localgasprices-map,0,2994228.htmlpage) to find the current gas prices across the Chicago metropolitan area.
Some “experts” seem to think that gasoline prices nationally will “top out” at about (http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080519/OPINION01/805190316) the level we here in the Chicago area are paying now.
I was being a tightwad in making the drive – since I didn’t want to pay the “ridiculous” rate of about $1.20 per gallon, or up to $1.40 if I were to get gasoline at a station near downtown Chicago.
NOW, OF COURSE, it seems like an Impossible Dream (cue “Camelot”) that gasoline was ever that cheap. On Sunday, for the first time in my life, I paid over $4 for a gallon of gasoline. The $15 that once would have nearly filled my car’s gas tank got me barely more than a quarter of a tank, which will keep me moving for a little while.
And today, I learned that the $4.09 per gallon I paid makes me the norm for a Chicago-area motorist – the Lundberg Survey says $4.07 per gallon is the average in Chicago, which makes us the most expensive metropolitan area in the continental United States.
At that price, a trip to Indiana for gasoline comes to a waste of time, particularly since I don’t really notice any significant difference anymore between gasoline prices in Cook County and Lake County, Ind. I’m certainly not going to drive deep into rural Indiana in search of cheap gas. I’d use up more than I’d save.
To "dream, the impossible dream" that gasoline will ever be as cheap as these once-outrageous rates is the status of our automobile-dominated society.This is just absurd. What logical reason is there for gasoline to be so expensive?
I DON’T WANT to hear about other countries where the price of gasoline has been higher than the equivalent of $4 per gallon for so long that they would dream of gas so cheap. Nor do I want to hear about places like Alaska or Hawaii, where basic commodities have to be shipped in and everything costs more.
I figure anyone who willingly lives in such an isolated place obviously gets so much pleasure from the locale that they accept higher gas and food costs as the price of living in “paradise.”
Besides, as of Monday, the average gasoline price in Anchorage was $3.89 per gallon, with some places selling it for as little as $3.83 per gallon. That’s the price we in much of the Chicago area were paying as recently as the end of last week.
Now some people will argue that these ridiculous gasoline prices are evidence that we ought to rely more on public transportation – which I have no problem with in theory. I am a big fan of the convenience of elevated trains and the Metra suburban commuter trains, which I have used whenever possible during my times living in Chicago proper and some of its surrounding suburbs.
BUT THERE ARE large swaths of the Chicago area to which public transportation is just not convenient (the stations are too far away, or the trains and buses run too infrequently).
Expanding service also isn’t a political reality, because there are too many people who perceive the issue of mass transit as some sort of liberal plot to take away a person’s automobile (just like some suspect the liberals want to take away their guns too!).
We are a car-based society. Why else have these ridiculous gasoline prices not caused a significant drop in the number of motorists?
People still have to get to work and to other places that are a part of their lives, and very few people live in communities where everything is within walking distance or a short bus ride away. I personally am working a job these days requiring me to make about a 20-minute drive, but would require something like two hours and three bus transfers to complete each way if I tried to do it with existing Chicago-area public transportation.
IT’S NOT PRACTICAL. For many people, it’s not possible – even if they wanted to take the bus (which many do not).
We’re hooked on cars, meaning we’re going to keep paying and paying these ridiculous prices (which don’t even make profits for the gas station owners – who are dependent on us buying overpriced slurpees, chips and lottery tickets in significant quantities in order to make a profit) for gasoline.
How about $5 per gallon? It’s not a ridiculous nightmare – it will be a reality, and the gasoline manufacturers know we will do little more than grumble every time we dig into our wallets to pay it.
We need serious relief on this issue. And I mean real relief, not some political hack spewing out rhetoric that amounts to nothing.
THAT IS WHY I actually gained a bit of respect for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama when the whole issue of gasoline prices came up during the campaign a few weeks ago and he was getting smacked around by his opponents for refusing to support talk of easing the federal government portion of the gasoline tax.
In theory, that would reduce the price of gasoline by a few pennies, and some people want to have dreams that those pennies would add up into significant dollars that would remain in the consumer’s wallet.
In reality, the amount is so small, that (based on the Obama campaign’s calculations) the total savings for a “typical” motorist would be about $20 – over the course of the entire summer of 2008.
In my car at the current gas price, $20 is about half a tank. For people who drive those SUV monstrosities to lug their kids around from activity to activity, $20 is as little as a quarter of a tank.
THAT PLAN, PUSHED in slightly different forms by Democrat Hillary R. Clinton and Republican John McCain, would not have offered serious tax relief, but the political people would have spun it to make it appear as though they were doing the American people some great favor.
What impressed me about Obama was that he remembered the “gasoline tax holiday” (that’s the political-speak way of making it sound so cute) that the Illinois General Assembly approved back in 2000 when gas prices were so out of control in this state that they were “threatening” to go over $2 per gallon (remember that?).
Obama voted for it, only to see the gasoline manufacturers boost their own prices so bolster their profit while keeping gas prices overall at the same level. He said he wishes he could have taken that vote back
This was probably one of the few times a public official (particularly one running for president) opening admitted to making a mistake. It is perhaps the only time that a public official appeared to have learned from his mistake – and hopefully will not repeat it again.
-30-
EDITOR’S NOTES: A lot of good it does me to know that gasoline in Tuscon, Ariz., goes for $3.48 per gallon, since I (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-gas-prices-web-may19,0,7796647.story) have no intention of moving there anytime soon.
For those of you willing to make a drive (and use up existing gasoline to find slightly-less expensive new gasoline), here is a place (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-localgasprices-map,0,2994228.htmlpage) to find the current gas prices across the Chicago metropolitan area.
Some “experts” seem to think that gasoline prices nationally will “top out” at about (http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080519/OPINION01/805190316) the level we here in the Chicago area are paying now.
Friday, April 25, 2008
So. Ill. interstate (finally) gets a name
This observation comes from someone who has driven automobiles from the Illinois/Wisconsin border to just north of that point where Illinois becomes one with Kentucky and Missouri – we in Chicago put names on our interstate highways, while the rest of the state seems content to think of their roads by numbers.
What we call the Stevenson Expressway is what the rest of Illinois prefers to think of as Interstate 55, while Interstate 90 gets called the Jane Addams Highway or the Kennedy Expressway, depending on whether one is south or north of downtown Chicago.
INTERSTATE 94 CAN be more confusing, because many Chicago residents don’t think of it as a single road. Depending on which portion of I-94 one is on, the road is the Edens expressway, the Tri-State Tollway or the Bishop Ford freeway.
The Dan Ryan Expressway is unique, since it comprises both I-94 and I-90.
Of course, one shouldn’t think of Chicago expressways in purely Democratic (or urban) terms. Former presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan are the two Republican recipients of Chicago-area expressways (Interstate 290 and Interstate 88, respectively) named in their honor.
In fact, about the only portion of an interstate highway in Illinois outside of the Chicago area that is named for a human being is that portion of Interstate 70 near East St. Louis known as the McGwire Expressway in honor of the former St. Louis Cardinals’ slugger whose “historic” home run achievement of 1998 only lasted as a record for four years.
What we call the Stevenson Expressway is what the rest of Illinois prefers to think of as Interstate 55, while Interstate 90 gets called the Jane Addams Highway or the Kennedy Expressway, depending on whether one is south or north of downtown Chicago.
INTERSTATE 94 CAN be more confusing, because many Chicago residents don’t think of it as a single road. Depending on which portion of I-94 one is on, the road is the Edens expressway, the Tri-State Tollway or the Bishop Ford freeway.
The Dan Ryan Expressway is unique, since it comprises both I-94 and I-90.
Of course, one shouldn’t think of Chicago expressways in purely Democratic (or urban) terms. Former presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan are the two Republican recipients of Chicago-area expressways (Interstate 290 and Interstate 88, respectively) named in their honor.
In fact, about the only portion of an interstate highway in Illinois outside of the Chicago area that is named for a human being is that portion of Interstate 70 near East St. Louis known as the McGwire Expressway in honor of the former St. Louis Cardinals’ slugger whose “historic” home run achievement of 1998 only lasted as a record for four years.
Ken Gray, here seen in 1974 with his congressional colleague-turned-president, Gerald Ford, was from an era when representatives boasted of the large amounts of federal money they brought back to their home districts. Now, they get derided for swimming in "pork." Photograph provided by http://www.illinoisstatesociety.org/
WHICH IS WHY I think it is about time that a downstate Illinois portion of an interstate highway gets a politico’s name attached to it.
Ken Gray, the longtime member of Congress from Southern Illinois, gets the honor of being the first.
He is going to have the portion of Interstate 57 that passes through Mount Vernon (about 240 miles south of Chicago, or 150 miles east of St. Louis at the site of the 200-foot-high Christian cross that looms over the interstate) named in his honor. It is not far from his hometown of West Frankfort.
Gray gets the honor in part because he was one of the members of Congress back in 1956 when Eisenhower signed into law the measure that created the concept of interstate highways – and significantly altering the life perspective of people who grew up in towns along U.S. Route 66 (Chicago to Los Angeles) and the Lincoln Highway (New York to San Francisco, passing through Chicago Heights, Ill.).
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS’ POLITICAL observers this week were digging up the old Kenny Gray stories about how he forced Interstate 57 (Chicago to Memphis, then down to New Orleans) to cut through his home region – by threatening to withhold his needed vote for construction of the entire interstate highway system.
Now to some people, that story is everything that is wrong with government today – a political official having a snit fit until a road is built through his community at taxpayer expense. They would take offense at the notion that during 24 years in Congress, Gray was proud to say he brought back $7 billion worth of federal projects to his home district.
But do people really believe the region of Southern Illinois (the portion of the state that lies below Interstate 70) would be better off if there weren’t major highways connecting the region to Chicago, St. Louis and Memphis?
I have driven on some of those rural highways of Southern Illinois, and on a couple of occasions, I have done it in the dark. One of the most terrifying road moments I ever experienced was trying to find the town of Tamms (located 12 miles north of Illinois’ southernmost tip) and winding up in the woods on a rural road (unnamed or numbered, as far as I can tell) just north of Anna. The road that led me to that point apparently used to be fairly common in that region, until the coming of the interstates.
THERE’S ONE PART of the renaming of the interstate portion for Kenny Gray that I find ironic – that it will alter a portion of Interstate 57.
That is the one interstate of the Chicago area that does not have a name of some now-forgotten personage attached to it.
So the one road that Chicago people think of as a number is now the one road that (at least some) downstate residents will think of as a name.
I can already hear the grumbling from Southern Illinois residents whenever they hear a Chicagoan in the future talk about “I-57” – “why can’t those dummies call it the Gray Expressway the way we do,” they’ll say, similar to the way we complain about “half-wit downstaters” who insist on calling it I-55, rather than by its proper name honoring Adlai E., the second.
-30-
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here’s a breakdown on all of the interstate highways that pass through Chicago (http://www.jameson.com/chicago_freeway_names.cfm) and help the city maintain its image as the transportation crossroads of the United States.
Ken Gray’s official biography (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=G000400) as a former member of Congress.
Long-haul truck drivers (http://www.truckingboards.com/trucking/upload/trucking-news/35118-freeway-stretch-named-after-ex-congressman.html) already are taking note of the I-57 name change.
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