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Recently, I had the pleasure of sharing thoughts with my friend as gas began to run out all around Nashville. Evidently Hurricane Ike had caused some problems with supply and there wasn’t any getting to Nashville. I didn’t think much about it at the time, since the day before Ike hit prices jumped a few cents in New Jersey, where I was at the time.
However, in retrospect, this scare seemed to crop up after the storm has gone through and prices in NJ had gone down. Perhaps I should’ve wondered why it was just Nashville that was running out of gas, and not anywhere else in the country. Either way, the Nashville gas shortage turned out to be little more than a bit of public anxiety mixed with some well-placed misinformation.
Recently, CNN reported on how the gas crisis, which left 75% of stations completely dry was started all little more than a rumour, which became self-fulfilling as people ran out to get gas in record numbers, sucking the pumps dry:
Williams said some drivers were following gas trucks to see where they were headed, and lines at some stations were a mile long. Fuel was continuing to enter the city, however, as pipelines were working and barges were coming in.
He likened it to Southerners rushing out to stock up on bread and milk when they hear it might snow.
Perhaps what we can learn from all this, however, is not that people can get a little crazy over gas, but that a functional, large scale public transit system is not only convenient and safe, but will be there for us when gas is not. Electric cars may be years off yet, but electric trains have been around longer than most of us!
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Nashville is not the only city running dry. Charlotte and Atlanta are experiencing similar gas shortages.
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