Americans Change Travel Habits
CBS
Transcript
high gas prices are forcing some to make some serious long-term changes and how they live more now from Nancy Cordes says we begin a new series changing times talk about riding the rails mary surratt II needed to cut her driving costs so she moved to a Pasadena California apartment complex that straddles a light rail hub saving her to 10 a month at the pump and now I'm filling up once a month instead of once a week high fuel prices are forcing many Americans to question some of the most basic assumptions about where they live and how they work in a recent survey of 900 coldwell banker realtors a stunning seventy-eight percent said rising fuel costs were causing their clients to consider city living for dollar gas seems to be causing a consumer reaction that three dollar gas didn't sales of hybrid cars surged twenty-five percent during the first four months of this year while large SUV sales plummeted thirty percent I used to christen Carly wasn't ready to give up her audi SUV so she found another way to save on gas for example swimming extreme carpooling the Trumbull Connecticut mom of two uses the free website divided the ride to share driving duties with 15 different families if financially it's it's big it's huge it is I recommend it to everybody 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 4-day workweeks tiny gloucester township in new jersey estimates that closing municipal offices on fridays will save thirty-five thousand dollars a year big ass the the electric you know it's it's so overwhelming with Americans downsizing their cars their homes even their work weeks analysts now predict that demand for fuel will drop this year for the first time in 17 years it could be they say that 2008 will go down in history as the year us gas consumption started a slow but permanent decline Nancy Cordes CBS News Trumbull Connecticut