Where to ride out a gas crisis

CNN named 10 places in America to "ride out a gas crisis"
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/moneymag/0807/gallery.bplive_gas_crunch.moneymag/index.html.

Four of them are small towns, and the average commute is 8-10 minutes in Marquette, Mich.; Hays, Kan.; Laramie, Wyo.; and Aberdeen, S.D. I'm not sure where people work in these small towns, except as close as the local quick-stop, school or post office.

In three places, 11-12 percent of people tele-commute from home -- Naples, Fla., Bainbridge Island, Wash., and Westport, Conn. Commuters there live in a beautiful place and are too remote, too educated and too wealthy to drive to work daily.

In a university town, State College, Penn., 42 percent bike or walk to work. That's cool. It's part of the culture. Biking and walking are the high-status ways to get around. Footpower is friendlier than car-power. Being a university town, it's also fashionable to live frugally, with fewer cars.

Outside of New York City in Hoboken, N.J., a majority of commuters take advantage of one of the nation's finest public transit systems to get to work. Only 25 percent of commuters drive alone to work in Hoboken. I'd take the bus, too, if it ran every 15 minutes, within a stone's throw of my house.

My favorite place is the Santa Paula, Call, where 29 percent of commuters carpool to work. Want to know why? They're migrant workers in the Citrus Capital of the World. The farm workers share vehicles to commute to the orange, lemon, avocado and strawberry fields.

The message here? The most devoted carpoolers in America are migrant workers. It explains why carpooling is such a tough sell, especially if you can afford the luxury of your own car. We aspire to do what the wealthy in our society do, not the poorest.