New Yorkers Save $700/year at the Pump, Thanks to Smart Transportation Policies

The average New York driver saves more than $700 per year in gas, compared to the average driver in Mississippi.  

Given what gas costs around here, that statistic really caught my eye as I reviewed our new report, just released today, "Fighting Oil Addiction: Ranking States' Gasoline Price Vulnerability and Solutions for Change."

The report quantified what we’d anecdotally thought:  rising gas prices are hitting drivers all across the country, but the states with smartest transportation policies are helping their drivers to feel less pain at the pump this summer.

Deron Lovaas, my colleague and a co-author of the report, said something that is worth repeating here:  "There is no immediate solution to high gas prices, but smart transportation polices can reduce gas bills for all drivers, no matter where they live," he said in NRDC’s press release today.  That’s because better state and local policies create better transportation options for everybody.

The full report, our fifth annual ranking of states’ vulnerability to rising gasoline prices and of states’ policies and investments to help commuters, is at www.nrdc.org/energy/states.  And Deron has already blogged on the big-picture importance of this information here.

As a New Yorker, I have a parochial interest in how our state did.  For the fifth year in a row, New York has been helping to lead the way in state and local policies that help commuters, including private sector tele-commuting incentives, high levels of transit investments, and efforts to reduce sprawl.  (For those keeping score, we’ve gone from 8th best to 4th best on the list).

Here in New York, we have 24/7 transit service, of course. 

But we also are one of only three states that has a quantifiable target for reducing the number of miles driven each year (the goal is to cut vehicle-miles travelled from projected levels by 10 percent in the next 10 years; the other states with targets are California and Washington).  

Despite well-publicized funding shortfalls, our report found that New York is the top state in terms of allocating state funds to transit.  These investments are absolutely critical for our long-term ability to reduce our dependence on oil and our ability to provide non-driving alternatives to driving in the short-term.

Although the report focuses on state policies, it is worth noting some key policies that are happening at the city level, thanks to so much innovative work happening at the NYC Department of Transportation.  These include the faster, better bus service provided by the growing Select Bus Service, 250 miles of new bike lanes (I passed hundreds, if not thousands, of slow-moving car commuters today, while I rode down the Hudson River Park and 9th Avenue bike paths this morning).  And, as we noted in the report, NYC DOT is about to pilot a program of “Pay-As-You-Drive” auto insurance, which will tie insurance premiums to the amount that the insured person actually drives, thereby creating economic incentives to use transit and drive less.

This all translates into real money for New Yorkers, as well as better commutes, less vulnerability to oil price spikes, and a more environmentally sustainable future.

As I wrote above, the average New York driver saves more than $700 per year, compared to the average driver in Mississippi, the state ranked at the bottom of the list.

Given the price of rent, food, baseball tickets, and everything else here in the Big Apple, that’s money in the bank, and a statistic to remember.