July 17, 2008
Our Towns
Moving Too Fast to Drive 55
By PETER APPLEBOME

PLATTEKILL, N.Y.

At the Plattekill travel plaza of the New York State Thruway on Wednesday, you didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing on gas prices and on the economy over all.

Forget the $4.27 per gallon for regular at the pumps. Inside, every flat-screen television seemed to feature one scary message or another for people to ponder over their Starbucks lattes or Roy Rogers burgers.

“America’s Fuel Crisis,” read the headline on CNN as various talking heads were summoned to debate drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “What I’ll Never Give Up,” was the topic on Headline News as callers were asked what they could not do without (favorite guitar and amp was one reply) no matter how far under water their finances might sink.

So you might have thought an idea that could cut people’s gasoline costs by 15 percent or more as soon as they pulled out of the lot might have some appeal. It’s a Golden Oldie from the 1970s that was resuscitated this month when Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia, suggested that Congress might want to consider returning to a national speed limit to save gasoline and possibly ease fuel prices.

Mr. Warner did not call for a return to 55 miles per hour, the limit set by Congress in 1974 in reaction to the energy shocks of another generation. But he asked the Energy Department to determine the most fuel-efficient speed limit, noting that Americans had saved 167,000 barrels of petroleum a day when the 55-mile limit was in effect. (Congress repealed the measure in 1995.) The experts say that fuel efficiency deteriorates radically at speeds above 60 miles per hour. Every 5 miles over that threshold is estimated to cost drivers, Mr. Warner said in his letter, “essentially an additional 30 cents per gallon in fuel costs.”

So slowing down from 65 or 70 miles per hour to 55 or 60 might seem a no-brainer — free money! — for drivers reeling from high gas prices. But though the rational brain might say yes, the reptile brain, the metabolic modern brain, the highway-driver brain, seems to say, let’s look for savings another way.

“It’s unrealistic,” said Darren Jacobs, an engineer from Grantham, N.H., who was driving home from Macungie, Pa. That is a trip of 412 miles, or 6 hours and 47 minutes, according to MapQuest. So assuming 25 miles per gallon, driving at 55 would likely cost 40 minutes and save at least $7. He figured he’d spend the money.

“It’s too slow,” Mr. Jacobs said. “It’s not the way we live. Everything is fast. We eat fast food. We have high-speed Internet. If you’re going from Point A to Point B you want to get there as soon as you can. I don’t think the solution is making us go slower. It’s getting tough on the greedy people who are profiting from this.”

Pete Boucheron, a retiree from Schenectady, N.Y., said, yeah, there’s some logic to 55, but it might have more appeal if prices got really high, say $6 or $7 a gallon. Gustavo Cardenas said he was for it — but then, he’s from Montreal.

Environmental groups say 55 is a good idea and as there’s an Internet presence for everything, groups like the Drive 55 Conservation Project, (www.drive55.org) are ready to go.

On the other hand, given red-state fury over the mere thought of a return to 55, don’t bet on a new law. As Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55” put it: “Write me up for 125/Post my face, wanted dead or alive/Take my license, all that jive/I can’t drive 55!”

In fact, there are various ideas out there to cope with the crushing increase in gas prices; one is for governments to be open four days a week, for longer hours, instead of five. But maybe Phil Gramm wasn’t entirely wrong. Maybe we are happier whining about problems rather than coming up with solutions that entail any sort of inconvenience.

As for 55 — law or not, no one’s stopping you. A retro drive toward the Catskills on Wednesday, with Chopin (way above my customary cultural pay grade) playing on the radio, had its pleasures. Crossing the Tappan Zee at 55, I was pretty much in the traffic flow, but before long I was being passed by everyone except one guy in a Nissan Maxima with handicap plates. It was not too bad on 287, but quite a bit more harried on the Thruway, which was two lanes, populated by many big trucks and S.U.V.’s probably not listening to Chopin.

I would not have been averse to a similar trip home, but like Mr. Jacobs, I had a deadline, and 55 seemed a luxury I couldn’t afford. I tuned the radio to oldies rock on WCBS, and a little pokily, but more or less in the traffic flow, set the cruise control to 65.

Update: Alas, the saga of the Wiffle ball kids of Greenwich, Conn., seems to have come to a lawyerly, if not entirely happy ending. After a group of players, parents and town officials met for two hours on Wednesday, First Selectman Peter Tesei said that the field youngsters built in May in an empty lot owned by the town would have to come down by Friday because it raised unacceptable liability issues. The town plans to help them build another field at a nearby school. “I think they could have let us play a few more weeks,” said Vincent Provenzano, one of the organizers. Then he excused himself, saying he was in the middle of a game.

E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com