Energy Costs Force Lifestyle Changes
With gas prices zooming past $4 a gallon, there are new signs Americans are ready to make big changes in where they live, what they drive and how they get to work. CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes has the first installment of the series: "Changing Times."
Talk about riding the rails.
Mary Sarotte needed to cut her driving costs. So she moved to a Pasadena, Calif., apartment building that straddles a light rail hub - saving herself $210 a month on gas.
"I'm filling it up about once a month, instead of once a week," Sarotte said.
High fuel prices are forcing many Americans to question some of their most basic assumptions about where they live and how they work.
In a recent survey of 900 Coldwell Banker realtors, a stunning 78 percent said rising fuel costs were causing their clients to consider city living.
"Four-dollar gas seems to be causing a consumer reaction that $3 gas didn't," said Samantha Gross of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "Consumers really believe that these high prices are here to stay."
Sales of hybrid cars surged 25 percent during the first four months of the year, while large SUV sales plummeted 30 percent.
Kristen Carley wasn't ready to give up her Audi SUV - so she found another way to save on gas; extreme carpooling. The Trumbull, Conn., mother-of-two uses the free Web site dividetheride.com, to share driving duties with 15 different families.
"Financially, it's big. It's huge," Carley said. "I recommend it to everyone because it really will save you money at the pump and that's really what we need right now."
All across the country, an avalanche of employers are offering - even mandating - four-day-work weeks as a way to cut their own fuel bills.
Tiny Glouster Township in New Jersey estimates that closing municipal offices on Fridays will save $35,000 a year.
"The gas, the electric, it's so overwhelming," said Gloucester Township employee LaTonya Brown.
With Americans downsizing their cars, their homes, even their workweeks, analysts now predict that demand for fuel this year will drop for the first time in 17 years.
It could be, they say, that 2008 will go down in history as the year U.S. gas consumption started a slow-but-permanent decline.
