I’m not sure if it was President Biden or someone else that compared our soaring gas prices to “the price of freedom”. Whomever it was was likely making a larger statement about the hardship that Americans will have to endure to preserve the democratic independence of Ukraine. But those higher prices at the pump are the price of our personal freedoms here in the US as well.
There are some that are celebrating these high gas prices. The anti-car culture is about to enter its salad days. For years, they have tried all means available to them to make driving yourself around as unappealing as possible. It started with bogging down vehicles with required safety features, emissions controls and fuel-efficiency requirements. Then came higher gas taxes and registration fees. That was followed by artificially low speed limits, carpool lanes and metered on-ramps, elimination of on-street parking for the creation of bike lanes and wider sidewalks, closing off entire streets to all vehicles except buses and bikes, zoning requirements to make suburban single-family home development less available and more expensive, and the outright prohibition on the sale of internal-combustion powered vehicles altogether under the guise of “saving the planet”.
“Cash for Clunkers” took tens of thousands of perfectly fine vehicles off the roads forever–creating artificial shortages in the used car market–making personal transportation that much more expensive. Streetcar tracks were put in the middle of some of the busiest streets in the country. “Parklets” moved dining and drinking out of buildings and into streets. Farmers markets that could easily be held in parking lots, parks, or on soccer fields are instead held on the main thoroughfares in downtown areas. And the other hot new trends are wheel taxes and transportation utility fees.
When the folks pushing for all those restrictions and roadblocks drive by a gas station sign with numbers over $4 or $5 their minds wander to what they consider to be their idyllic society. Buses, streetcars, trains, and subways packed with people. Narrow streets filled with bicycles and electric scooters. Sidewalks crammed with walkers that just exited high-rise apartment complexes heading to their workplaces just a block or two away. In other words, everyone else forced to live the way they think people should live.
But as the anti-car culture has found out in the past, Americans are very stubborn people–even when the cost of maintaining their current lifestyles becomes more expensive. And we place a very high value on the ability to go where we want, when we want to go there. My Jeep sits in my garage every night–just a few steps away from the door to the house. I do not have to walk five blocks to get to my Jeep. I don’t have only four times an hour that I can get into my Jeep–she is always available at a moment’s notice. My Jeep can access almost every street in this country and will stop at almost any address. I don’t drive my Jeep for 10-minutes, get out of her, and then get into another Jeep heading on a different route. My Jeep operates on Sundays. My Jeep has a roof and a heater–which come in very handy on the 250 days a year here in the Fox Valley that it is not sunny and at least 60-degrees.
When I am done with my Jeep, I don’t leave her in the middle of the sidewalk or laying in someone’s yard. No one is sleeping all day in my Jeep. No one begs me for money while I’m in my Jeep. I’m yet to be mugged in my Jeep. My Jeep doesn’t permanently smell like urine. I can carry hundreds of pounds of items in my Jeep if I need to. I’ve never had to stand for my entire ride in my Jeep because all of the seats are full. There are hundreds of thousands of places for me to refuel my Jeep all along the routes I need to take–even in the most remote areas of the Northwoods.
Even when I travel without my Jeep, there are businesses and even total strangers at my destination that will provide me with another Jeep to drive for as long as I want to pay them for it. And I can take that Jeep anywhere I want, anytime I want, without having to order a special pass card or research timetables on an app.
So as I consider the “true cost” of continuing to drive, I add in the loss of personal freedom and giving control of my life and time to others–not to mention the ability to stay in the home where I live and to keep the job that I have–even though they are a fair distance apart. And suddenly four or five bucks a gallon for gas doesn’t seem that bad after all.
