Over the past week, average gas prices dropped below $3 in several midwest states.  Gas is now below $3.50 per gallon (on average) everywhere but Alaska and Hawaii.  The Associated Press published an article on the likely trend for gas prices in the months to come.  Below is the trailing 12 month price average from AAA. 

While prices should stay low for the next couple of months they are likely to trend back up in the Spring.  Coupled with a period of general belt-tightening due to the broader slowdown in the economy, demand is likely to stay high for cost effective alternatives to driving alone.  Here is the 12 month moving average for vehicle miles traveled going back to 1983. 

There have been a slew of recent articles about the dilemma facing public transit agencies.  With ridership increasing in lock step with fuel costs many agencies face record ridership and record deficits. 

The New York Times has an article today about Rochester NY and how the Rochester Regional Transit Service is breaking a nationwide trend and lowering bus fares.  Is there a blueprint here for other cities?  Not exactly.  The details of Rochester's transit turnaround make comparisons to larger cities misleading. 

The article explains that Rochester Transit received over 50% of their $62m budget in state aid.  Rochester runs just 265 buses compared to over 4,500 along with 6,200 subway cars in New York.  Rochester Transit also receives $10m per year from the local school district which provides city buses passes to all it's students at a rate of more than 2x the published fare. 

Transit agencies tend to cover about 25-40% of their operating costs with fares.  Seems Rochester is pretty typical after all. 

We were excited to get the news this week that Goose has been selected as a finalist in the California Clean Tech Open in the transportation category.  Check the Clean Tech Open site to learn more and to see a complete list of selected companies. 

In the “no commute at all” category, the New York Times has a good high-level survey of teleconferencing technology today.  Predictably, the cost of high-end systems from Cisco and HP is dropping quickly and lower cost solutions like WebEx are becoming ubiquitous.  The article quotes a customer service trainer at Subaru who estimates she now reaches 2,500 people every six months instead of 220 at a cost of $.75 per person instead of $300.

It’s a bit facetious to state, but ‘not going’ is by far the cheapest form of transportation and it’s an increasingly valid choice for a lot of business travel, whether by air or road. 

As employee commuting programs have begun to gain the attention of business leaders and others concerned with environmental sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions, a few companies rise above the pack for their programs.

Genentech's gRide program has been cited as a best-in-class program by organizations such as the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, ACTERA, and the International Associating of Business Communications.  We at Goose Networks wish to congratulate our partners at Genentech for their leadership in addressing transportation as an important part of corporate social responsibility. 

It’s a rough time to be an SUV.  If news articles about plummeting sales and resale values aren’t enough, the rental car market is piling on.  On a recent day trip to San Francisco the cheapest rental car I could find was a full-size SUV.  The guy at the counter said they couldn’t get people to take them without a material (i.e. irrational) discount to their economy cars. 

I drove 90 miles and estimate I spent $10 more on gas and $25 less for the rental.  And I still felt guilty all day...  So much for Homo economicus.  

While we at Goose Networks strive to leverage every-day technologies to make carpooling easier, for years commuters in Washington DC have been practicing their own low-tech version of ridesharing.

Known as 'slugging,' this practice is casual carpooling in its most basic form.  As cars pull to the curb, a driver will announce her destination at to the person at the head of the line -- the caller in slug parlance -- who then relays that information to the slugs behind

The drivers need an extra body or two to get into the high-occupancy lanes. So they pick up the slugs, who get a free ride into the city and a faster commute themselves. The system isn't overseen by any government -- it has simply evolved organically over the years.  And the system works great!

Read, listen, or watch National Public Radio's coverage to learn more about DC slug lines.

Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, authors of “Freakonomics,” published this article in Sunday's New York Times Magainze. 

In their piece, the authors consider the social costs of the negative externatlities of driving -- congestion, carbon emissions, and traffic accidents among them -- and offer a few radical proposals for reducing the number of miles driven by Americans each year.
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Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT and author of "Predictably Irrational: the hidden forces that shape our decisions", spoke last night at Seattle's Town Hall. 

In his remarks, Dan touched on the concept of social norms and market norms, and why we can be happy to do things, but not when we are paid to do them.  (For an illustration of this point, read Dan's description of what might happen if you tried to pay your mother-in-law for having you over for Thanksgiving dinner.)

I found this an interesting framework by which to consider carpooling and the issue of rider to driver reimbursement.  For example, though Goose's ridesharing services have the capacity to automatically split fuel costs between rider and driver, few of the organizations we work with choose to enable this feature. 

Based on the principles of social norms, one could argue that these organizations believe that the willingness of their members to offer rides to one another is rooted in the warm and fuzzy realm of social norms, where instant paybacks are not required.  Dan himself might go further to say that introducing cash compensation into the equation could result in an uncomfortable collision of social and market norms.

Though this may well be true, somehow I suspect that the consequence of offering your driver a few bucks for gas would be less than attempting to pay your mother-in-law for a turkey dinner.