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In Sprawling South Florida, Drivers Struggle for Ways to Save Gas

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 September 2005, 15:00 CDT

By Michael Turnbell, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Sep. 27--Every weekday morning, Cheryl Vandepas rides her bike to a Weston bus stop and boards a free Broward County Transit shuttle for the 15-mile commute to her job in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

She's the kind of commuter President Bush had in mind when he asked Americans on Monday to conserve fuel and cut out unnecessary travel after two hurricanes disrupted oil supplies in the Gulf of Mexico. She's also an anomaly in a region where most people drive to work alone, and sprawling suburbs from West Palm Beach to Miami make it difficult to ride mass transit or carpool. "I just think, with the advent of Katrina and Rita, we all really need to pay attention to our habits," Vandepas, 56, said.

Sam Perry, 49, of West Palm Beach, supports conservation efforts, but said it takes extra planning to get to work or go out with friends.

Perry said planning his life around a bus schedule means reserving three hours of his day just to get to Boca Raton and back. He's also had to eliminate his nightlife when Palm Tran stops running around 9:30 p.m., or risk walking home.

"It's really difficult because I'd like to be able to go downtown," he said. "You can't go to a movie after 7 p.m."

Sharing a ride with someone else holds more appeal to those who need more flexibility than mass transit offers. More than 12,000 South Florida commuters have asked about carpooling in the last month, said Jim Udvardy, director of South Florida Commuter Services. About 80 percent of the commuters in South Florida drive alone, according to the latest U.S. Census.

With gas prices hovering near $2.85 a gallon, some commuters are saving up to $200 a month by carpooling.

"We're attracting people that wouldn't have considered carpooling a year ago that are now giving it another thought because of the fuel shortages and the recent spike in gas prices," Udvardy said. "These prices are a huge financial impact for many people."

Vandepas is one of three South Florida commuters being honored this week by the state's ride-share agency as "Commuters of the Year" for supporting driving alternatives. The other two are Stanley Goldenberg, of Miami-Dade County, and Dave Fletcher, of Hollywood.

Goldenberg, 52, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Miami, has ridden Miami-Dade Transit to work daily since 1987.

Fletcher, 46, senior director for graduate admissions at Barry University in Miami Shores, began using a combination of riding Tri-Rail and biking from the Golden Glades station. Then he switched to carpooling and motivated four others to share rides with him.

"I would love to be able to give up my car," said Fletcher, who estimates he's saved hundreds of dollars a year in auto costs by sharing rides or taking the train. "My car insurance dropped almost immediately. And that doesn't count maintenance and fuel and everything else that goes along with driving every day."

Pump prices for regular gasoline began moving upward over the weekend at some South Florida service stations after seven oil refineries in Texas and Louisiana were shut down by Rita.

The average price of a gallon of regular in Fort Lauderdale was $2.85, up from $2.82 on the weekend, according to Monday's AAA Auto Club Daily Fuel Gauge Report. In the West Palm Beach-Boca Raton area it was also $2.85 a gallon, up two cents a gallon, while in Miami, regular averaged $2.86, up one cent.

Although damage to the oil industry wasn't as bad as some feared, President Bush warned Americans to expect some effect on energy supplies.

"A lot of our production comes from the Gulf and when you have a Hurricane Katrina followed by a Hurricane Rita, it's natural, unfortunately, that it's going to affect supplies," Bush said after a briefing at the Energy Department.

"It's important for our people to know that we understand the situation and we're willing to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to mitigate any shortfall in crude oil that could affect our consumers."

On Capitol Hill, Republican leaders said they were moving swiftly to write legislation aimed at spurring refinery construction and expansion. Some expressed interest in launching a new push to relax a decades-old moratorium on new offshore oil drilling in most U.S. coastal waters.

Congressional leaders said they had not decided whether they would draft another comprehensive energy bill or try to attach provisions aimed at building more refineries to a package of hurricane relief measures.

If oil is made available from the strategic reserves, it likely will be in the form of a loan to specific refineries, Energy Department officials said. That is a much quicker process than a formal release and sale of oil, requiring a go-ahead by other oil-consuming nations.

After Katrina, DOE approved loans of 13 million barrels of oil to refineries in Louisiana that could not get crude because of supply disruptions. DOE spokesman Craig Stevens said there has not been a request for more SPR oil at this time.

Oil prices slid Monday, as markets reacted to reports of relatively light damage to crucial U.S. petroleum processing zones in Texas.

Staff Writers Tanya Caldwell and Joseph Mann, the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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