Bloglanta

When I passed by the gas station yesterday on my way home, I saw the regular unleaded price at $2.92/gallon. The place was packed with panicked drivers trying to get whatever was left.

This morning, when I left for work, the pumps were shut down. Yesterday’s crowd took what was left. After the power failure on the Gulf to Atlanta pipeline, the AJC reported what was going on, and panic set in before any officials could step in to assure everyone that there was no gas shortage, and a little bit of conservation will carry everyone through for the next couple of days.

A couple of days is how long it will likely take for the empty gas stations to catch their refills.

Over the coming months, as suppliers attempt to fix the Gulf rigs that were dislodged in the course of the storm, theory will become reality. We’ll begin to find out the real price elasticity for oil. Some folks have changed their plans, and others have not. It won’t take long to notice a few different types of responses to this thread:

• Yes, I’m changing plans by driving less
• No, I’m not changing plans, but I’m spending less on other things
• No, I’m rich, so I don’t have to adjust my spending habits. Nyeah nyeah, phbbt! >:-p
• I don’t need to drive because I ride bikes / take transit / walk, and I’m enjoying it.

But at what point do the responses turn to, “Why haven’t our legislators focused on the future? Why havent our local leaders focused on the future?” As reported recently on the front page of the Atlanta Business Chronicle, MARTOC, the state legislative committee charged with focusing on the past and creating scandals out of thin air has done its job very well. While acknowledging the “yeoman’s work” MARTA officials have done toward increasing transparency and accountability, Republican legislators Jill Chambers, Harry Geisinger, and John Wiles have now officially demonstrated through their actions that they’re not willing to offer MARTA any rewards for good behavior.

Chambers: “wondered why MARTA spent thousands of dollars focus-group testing the Breeze Card, which she said she felt was a fairly self-explanatory system.”

Perhaps the focus-group testing is a part of the reason why the system is self-explanatory. Would she rather MARTA implement a system that’s not self-explanatory? Then she could complain that MARTA didn’t focus-group test the system, and then MARTA would have to spend millions more to make the system user-friendly. She would have loved that, I’m sure, just for the political points she would have gained.

MARTA has struggled to think outside the box to bring more money to operations. More money in operations means more service. That’s about as simple as it gets, and they’ve done a remarkably admirable job of it. But then, they get questioned about “derivatives transactions, legal and information technology expenses (the authority is undertaking a roughly $40 million IT overhaul to bring its systems out of the 1980s), and the sale-leaseback agreements on its rail cars and tracks.” While MARTA focuses on its future, MARTOC focuses on the past and whips up scandals out of thin air. MARTOC should have been praising MARTA for thinking outside the box and finding ways to increase service. Their scandal-mongering is just disgusting politics.

Meanwhile, metro Atlanta commuters continue to suffer with too few choices. Oil and gas prices leaped today. With what happened in the Gulf region, the cost of supplying oil will go up, too. Even once everything settles back down, we’ll easily settle down to about $4.00 per gallon at the pumps.

MARTA announced today that they are increasing service in anticipation of greater ridership. Unlike our state and regional leaders, MARTA stepped up to the plate and made the responsible choice.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2005 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Politics, as Usual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.