The older of our neighbor’s two sons is a student at the University of Washington. We were talking the other day, and when I mentioned that I hadn’t seen much of him lately he explained that he was now living on campus. He had been living at home and commuting to classes.
I didn’t have to ask him why he had decided to make the change. He explained the reasons for his decision — probably very much in the same form that he had presented them to his parents; at least it sounded that way.
There were two reasons. First, the drive in to Seattle seemed to get longer and more unpredictable each day. It also had gotten very expensive. Driving was essentially wasted time and as his studies became more demanding, time seemed to become scarcer. Second, it seemed more difficult to concentrate on his studies at home. They are a close family, and it was too easy to get caught up in home and family activities.
The first element in his decision was pure economics, and it is affecting us all. The costs of transportation, in both time and money, are reshaping our lives, our thinking and our dreams. Sometimes the decisions are noted in headlines, but more often they are made quietly, unobserved and largely unnoticed, at first.
The cost of gasoline, for example, has risen steeply and we would expect people to respond by driving less. But it has taken nearly a year for the increased prices at the pump to show up in declining sales. Still, over that year the rate of growth in sales has been shrinking, and in recent weeks American drivers have actually bought less gasoline than they did last year at this time.
The reason for the slow rate of change is that the demand for gasoline is, and remains, “inelastic,” the term economists use to describe a situation where the quantity sold is relatively unresponsive to short-run price changes — a situation typical for necessities. But in the longer term, demand for gasoline becomes more elastic, more responsive to price changes.
Part of this is wise caution on the part of consumers who wait to see if they are dealing with a permanent price change or a brief spike. It costs a lot of money to switch vehicles, and it wouldn’t make much sense to sell your SUV and buy a smaller car or a hybrid if higher gasoline prices were only going to be around for a few weeks.
But it did make sense to cut back on driving a little and that is what people did. They planned their shopping routes, and made decisions, small and large, that included the cost of driving in their calculations, just as our young neighbor did in choosing to move to the UW campus.
The cumulative effects of decisions like these will reshape the economic development of Snohomish County in ways that are still hard to quantify, but very real nonetheless. Cars will remain a major factor but long-distance, “crazy commutes,” for example, will no longer make economic sense.
There was a second element in our neighbor’s decision, too, that has implications for us in Snohomish County: academic demands on students.
A key parcel of property included in the Everett UW Campus proposal turned out to belong to Sound Transit — which is not interested in selling — and this has prompted a review of the project.
In this case, rethinking is good. We should make sure that we consider the campus location decision in light of higher transportation costs as well as the academic demands and higher standards being imposed by the global economy.
From an educational standpoint, there is merit in a residential campus, a place for students to be students. It isn’t for everybody, of course. Today’s economic pressures force many college students to juggle jobs, home responsibilities, commutes, and their studies — daily heroics by almost any standard.
But that kind of commuter-based study is especially difficult in the demanding academic areas of science, engineering, mathematics and technology — and those are precisely the areas where the jobs are developing and our young people will be needed. And if we consider what the total costs of commuting to school will be in 10, 15, 20 years, a residential campus begins to look better and better.
There were no losers among the three finalist locations suggested for a new four-year university in Snohomish County. Each had merit. But even though there are dormitories included in the Everett proposal, it would be, at heart, a commuter campus. We should give that some thought as we reconsider what is best for our county, its children and its future.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. He also writes “Business 101” monthly for the Snohomish County Business Journal.
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