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Life & Times Transcript
05/04/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Van pools help reduce pollution and traffic congestion, but what's in it for you? Ken Ezell>> One week's worth of gas in my own truck is equal to a ride fee for a whole month in a van pool. Val Zavala>> And then, action, horror, cowboys and one film we don't know how to describe. Can our critics figure it out? It's all coming up next on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> There's only one thing going up faster than gas prices these days and that's consumer frustration, but what can you do? Well, you may not realize that, if you work for a large company in southern California, it's required to offer a rideshare program. That's right. More than one person to a vehicle. And as Orange County reporter, Roger Cooper, tells us, a lot of commuters are getting to know their coworkers a little better these days. Roger Cooper>> A gas station is a downright unpleasant place to be these days. >> "I mean, some places it's four dollars." Roger Cooper>> There is pain at the pumps and it shows. Just look at the frowns on peoples' faces as they pay the price to drive here in southern California. There is gloom over gasoline that's three dollars a gallon and going up. >> "I mean, I'm upset but there's nothing I can do about it." Roger Cooper>> So why is this woman smiling? Because Sheila Hayden, an event planner at UC Irvine, has found a way to protect herself from high pump prices, at least partially. For the past year, Sheila has shared her ride from San Clemente to UC Irvine with other members of a van pool. Sheila Hayden>> It saves the wear and tear on my car, number one, which is a big deal to me because it's a fairly new car. Now with gas prices, of course, it's a huge advantage. Roger Cooper>> Each weekday, UCI puts twenty vans like this on the road allowing van pool participants to share their ride and share savings on gas. Sheila Hayden>> We save a lot of money and then they take a fee out of our paychecks every month to pay for the van pool, which is very minimal compared to what you're getting for the cost. Very, very cheap. Roger Cooper>> What do you think you have to pay a month to do this? Sheila Hayden>> It's about sixty dollars a month, I believe it is. Roger Cooper>> Do you have any idea what you'd pay more if you had your car? Sheila Hayden>> Oh, gosh, I'd probably be paying over two hundred in gas plus a parking permit. Roger Cooper>> On a given day, some fifteen hundred van pools are on the road in southern California. But growth of van pools and ridesharing started more than a decade ago with the Air Quality Management District, or AQMD. It's task? To clean up southern California's smoggy air. Sam Atwood>> Since the late 1980s, AQMD has required larger companies to increase the number of people who carpool to work or take other steps to reduce their driving trips. Roger Cooper>> Air Quality officials here in Diamond Bar once required all companies with more than two hundred fifty employees to start a rideshare program, but now not all companies have to reach the same goal. And what happens if they don't reach their goal or if they don't want to start a rideshare program? AQMD spokesman, Sam Atwood, says businesses have other options. Sam Atwood>> Basically, they can pay an annual fee to AQMD and we invest that money in emission reduction programs. Roger Cooper>> UC Irvine opted to start a rideshare program. It leases vans and organizes pools for its employees. Half of all the large companies in southern California choose to go this route and that has spurred another kind of business: companies that help other companies organize ridesharing. This is the vast Irvine Spectrum business park where some fifty-five thousand workers show up each day. An organization called Spectrumotion designs plans to help the businesses here meet their rideshare requirements. And in the city of Orange, a company called VPSI works directly with groups of individuals who want to form their own van pools. VPSI Manager, Sandy Boyle, says she can actually track the price of gas by the number of people showing interest in van pooling. Sandy Boyle>> Last summer, we started to see the effects of the higher gas prices. We had a big surge in business from July to September with September being the pinnacle. Our website allows people to come on to our website and look for rides on vans. Prior to last summer, we would generally get about four hundred hits of people actually registering on our database to find a van pool match. Just last week, we had four hundred sixty people, so we think that, you know, we're right back to it again with the high gas prices. Roger Cooper>> UC Irvine's Manager for Commuter Services, Ken Ezell, is seeing the same pattern. Ken Ezell>> I think people are realizing that it's getting just terribly expensive to commute anymore. You know, for example, one week's worth of gas in my own truck is equal to a ride fee for a whole month in a van pool, so it's really a good deal. Roger Cooper>> And VPSI Sandy Boyle says that, even though higher gas prices make van pooling a little more expensive, it still costs less than driving yourself. Sandy Boyle>> Prior to the gas prices being on the rise, we could pretty much assure people that they'd save about a thousand dollars a year in commuting costs by van pooling versus driving alone in their cars. Roger Cooper>> So what's life like in a van pool? Sheila's commute starts at her home in San Clemente. Sheila Hayden>> I live about a block from the Park and Ride, so I just walk there every morning. It's a nice walk for me and I meet everyone there at a quarter to seven and we head out. We get here in about twenty minutes. We take the toll road, read the newspaper, chit-chat, and it's relaxing. Roger Cooper>> At the end of the workday, the van circles the campus picking up Sheila and her commute mates for the trip home. Sheila Hayden>> And we head out back the same way and more chit-chatting about our day and what's gone on. We get back to the Park and Ride and I just walk home. Sandy Boyle>> Our customers will read or sleep or catch up on some work or just, you know, ride and talk to their friends and not have the stress of actually doing the driving. Roger Cooper>> And in case you were wondering, most van pool programs provide free rides home in the middle of the day should an illness or family emergency come up. But as much as Sheila loves her van pool, she realizes that they're not right for everyone. Sheila Hayden>> No, definitely not. I have a pretty much basic eight to five schedule. For people who don't have that schedule, who have to work late, it would not work for them. People with small children especially, it would not work for them. Sam Atwood>> A lot of rideshare organizations suggest that you try it out just for one day, maybe one day a week, or you just try it on a one-time basis to kind of get a feel for it and see what's involved. Roger Cooper>> There are a few tradeoffs in making your commute this way, as Sheila is quick to point out. There has to be some down sides. Can you think of any? Sheila Hayden>> Oh, yeah. I miss my carpool rider because we don't get to stop at Target or happy hour (laughter). Roger Cooper>> You can't make the van pool stop at happy hour? Sheila Hayden>> No, I can't, unfortunately, or Target or the Mervyn's sale (laughter). Sandy Boyle>> I think a lot of people also do get a thrill out of doing something to save the environment, to reduce some of the congestion on the freeways and not pollute as much. Sheila Hayden>> Oh, definitely, definitely. There are eight people that are off the road in our van pool. That really makes a difference. Roger Cooper>> Van pool consultants say that, if you live about fifteen miles from your work, van pooling might just be an option for you and maybe even bring back that smile you lost at the pumps. In Orange County, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> And check out this website: commutesmart.info. It has everything you need to find the best carpool for your commute. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Toni Guinyard>> Take a look at the rising gas prices. They increase almost daily, but have you wondered why? It seems everyone has an explanation. So we spent some time with the President of the Western States Petroleum Association and asked him why is it costing us so much to fill 'er up? Joe Sparano>> Most of the reason involves the cost of crude. In the last year, crude is up almost thirty-eight to forty percent, even more now with yesterday's increase. Crude represents, according to the Energy Information Administration, fifty-five to sixty-five percent of the price of a gallon of gasoline. We have some of the highest taxes in the country here. Sixty cents a gallon or more makes us third in the country in terms of gasoline tax at the pump. And we have a very special blend of gasoline that burns cleaner than anywhere in the world. Our own Air Resources Board has said that costs five to fifteen cents a gallon more. Maybe overall in time, the most important reason is supply and demand. Toni Guinyard>> It's hard to sell the public on this argument because everyone is opening the newspaper and reading that oil companies are making record profits. How do you explain that? Joe Sparano>> The profits that are identified on television, for example, in the fourth quarter, Exxon made a very large profit and everybody's written about it. However, when you look at their profit on an earnings per dollar of revenue, it was about 9.7 percent. If you look at the whole industry, it was 8.9 percent. All industry in the United States, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, averages 6.3 percent, so, yes, it was a little bit higher. These are huge companies. They bring in large revenues, but where does it go? A good question to ask. Owners of these big oil companies, publicly traded companies, forty-one percent of them are either public or private pensions. Pension funds in the state or IRAs, other private pension funds from private industries. They are some of the largest groups of owners of these companies. Finally, the companies reinvest the money. In the last twelve years, only twice has earnings even matched the amount of money reinvested in the business. The last three years in America our companies invested in exploration, production, refining and marketing a hundred twenty billion last year. Over a hundred billion in 2004. This year, the projection is a hundred twenty-five billion just in the United States. Toni Guinyard>> The numbers are big and the numbers are impressive, but to someone who cannot afford to fill up their tank to go from point A to point B, they don't care. Joe Sparano>> Right. Toni Guinyard>> That's the reality of it. So how does your industry speak to the public in that sense? What do you tell us when we're struggling to make ends meet to begin with? Joe Sparano>> It's a very difficult problem and very difficult to explain. The consumer doesn't care what the inflation-adjusted price for gasoline was twenty-five years ago, which was higher than now. You drive up to a pump and it says a certain number. It may strap your budget. There are no easy short-term fixes and I won't try to present them as though there were. We have a twenty-five year in the making problem. Public policy is a big issue. We have not been allowed to drill in spots in this country. Interesting fact, on federal lands alone, there are six hundred thirty-five trillion known cubic feet of gas. That's enough to heat every one of the sixty million homes in America that use natural gas for a hundred twenty years. We can't touch that. Toni Guinyard>> Are you saying this is an issue of environment versus -- Joe Sparano>> -- I don't think you have to trade off or do one or the other, but there have been some public policy decisions about where we can drill, about the ability to add refining capacity. We haven't built one in California in thirty-seven years. In the United States, it's been thirty years. Those are problems that put us behind the curve on supply and demand. When you couple that with worldwide tension in Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, super growing demand in China and India and even in the United States, our economy has been good for years. We have been demanding more and more each day. We use almost twenty-one million barrels a day of product. To make that product, we import thirteen. That's about sixty-three percent. All of those factors make it very difficult for that price to stay steady. When there are disruptions, there is a reaction in the marketplace. What I can urge consumers to do is two or three things. Number one, pick the lowest price. There are ninety-five hundred stations in California and some of them have lower prices than others and you should buy the lowest price gas. If your car can run on eighty-seven octane, don't buy ninety-one. Keep your tires inflated. AAA has a marvelous set of tips for short-term. In the longer term, people will have to decide whether the kind of prices we've been seeing motivate them to buy SUVs or Priuses. Hybrid cars are wonderful, a great invention. There aren't a lot of them available. Toni Guinyard>> Why is there such a difference in price from one station to the next, from one neighborhood to the next? Joe Sparano>> There are a number of reasons. One is just the local supply and demand conditions. If there's a tremendous demand in an area for whatever reason, the prices are likely to go up. That's our capitalist system. When demand exceeds supply, prices go up. But if you want to look in a neighborhood, companies have different pricing practices. Companies that don't use credit cards can offer their customers a lower price because they pay less of a fee to run their station. Every station has operating costs and some of them are different. Fuel deliveries come at different times and are priced differently, so companies have a bit of flexibility. But by and large, the same set of supply and demand factors in California, that really narrow margin between what we make and what consumers demand and what we ship out of state, is what really sets the price. The final thing is the concentration of stations. If you live in a neighborhood that has five stations in a five square mile area, they don't have to be nearly as competitive as if you live in a neighborhood that has twenty-five stations in the same five square mile area. They're fighting each other for the customers. It's a finite number of customers. Toni Guinyard>> Convince me that consumers aren't being gouged at the pump, that we aren't being victimized by those people who set the prices for gasoline. Joe Sparano>> There have been thirty studies in the last twenty years by everyone from the Federal Trade Commission to our own Attorney General, to Attorneys General in more than twenty states, the California Energy Commission, the Justice Department. Just about anybody and everybody who could investigate prices has done so and not once, not one investigation in those twenty years that they've taken place, has ever turned up any evidence of wrongdoing. No evidence of what you talked about, no price gouging, no collusion. None of that happens and it's been proven over and over again. People mistake the angst they feel over prices which is real for somebody doing something to create that. It's the market. We live in a market driven by supply and demand factors. It is those market factors, not company practices or pricing activities, that cause the price of gasoline to move the way it does. Toni Guinyard>> Joe Sparano, President of the Western States Petroleum Association, it is getting noisy up here, so I'll end the interview. Thank you for spending some time with Life and Times. Joe Sparano>> Thank you very much, Toni. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week, "Mission: Impossible III", of course, stars Tom Cruise. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the villain this time around and J.J. Abrams who created the television show, "Lost", is the director. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Jean Oppenheimer of New Times and Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor. Peter, you go first on "MI III". Peter Rainer>> "Mission: Impossible III" to you, Larry (laughter). Larry Mantle>> (Laughter) Oh, excuse me. Peter Rainer>> This is a pretty good popcorn movie. You know, hold the butter or hold the butter substitute (laughter). The plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense, as usual in these movies and I think the one problem with this movie, I suppose, is that it doesn't have a stronger story. But it's very well directed in terms of its action. There are some really virtuoso set pieces that, of course, could never begin to happen in real life or even in a computer game, it seems to me. Tom Cruise does some of his own stunts which is admirable -- no couch jumping though -- and Philip Seymour Hoffman is absolutely terrific as the chief villain. He's sort of the Bond villain of the piece, but he plays it as a real actor. He gets this real psycho pathology as a character down pat. It's worth seeing. Larry Mantle>> Well, it's interesting to see such a fine actor in kind of a disposable movie like this. Your thoughts, Jean? Jean Oppenheimer>> Well, I think Philip Seymour Hoffman must have had the time of his life because it's probably the one and only time he's going to be sort of like an action star. Here's this scene where Tom Cruise puts on a Philip Seymour Hoffman mask, but it's Hoffman having to play the part. He's playing the Tom Cruise part, so I think he had a lot of fun with that. You just feel like you're being propelled through this story. I mean, I agree very much with what Peter said. One thing that I liked about the early action scenes is that they were shot at twenty-four frames per second. Later, they weren't, but a lot of films try to make these action scenes go really faster. I never know why they do that because it's even harder to tell what's going on. So it is, as Peter said, like a generic popcorn film, but certainly entertaining. Larry Mantle>> Our second film is one in a continuing spade of almost weekly horror movies to be released. "An American Haunting" stars Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Well, Jean Oppenheimer, Sissy Spacek returns to a horror film decades later. What did you think of "An American Haunting"? Jean Oppenheimer>> I was disappointed. But with this cast, Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek, you expect something more than this sort of run of the mill, supernatural horror film. This has a problem that I think a lot of horror films or supernatural films do, which is that they have all these things happening, but they don't give you any clues along the way. Then at the end, ta-da, surprise, they sort of explain everything. For me, it would be a lot more fun to try and figure out what's going on. You know, if you want to just jump out of your seat because you like demonic possession type stories, there'll be something there for you. Also, in the end, I felt that they never really -- they explained why, but not really how these supernatural events had happened. So I didn't even feel satisfied on that end. Larry Mantle>> Our third film this week is the comedy, "Art School Confidential". It's directed by Terry Zwigoff who also helmed "Bad Santa", "Ghost World" and the acclaimed documentary, "Crumb". His film stars Max Minghella and Sophia Myles in a parody of the art world. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Peter, your take on "Art School Confidential"? Peter Rainer>> Well, I generally like Terry Zwigoff's movies a great deal, not only "Bad Santa", but "Ghost World" and that great documentary, "Crumb". He's not exactly a director that you can confuse with being sunny. "Art School Confidential" is very downbeat and rather dreary. It has some marvelous atmosphere within the art school itself. Max Minghella is an interesting camera subject and there's some nice things around the edges of this film, but in the center of it all is this kind of, you know, dreary funk that never really lifts above itself. For a film that is this cynical, I think it's a disservice to the art world to never at least show what the power of art can do to someone's life. After all, this is a movie about people who aspire to be Picasso and so forth. It just seems to go off in all the wrong directions. I wish it were better because I like his movies so much, but I think this is a misfire. Larry Mantle>> Our final film this week is "The Proposition" set in late nineteenth century Australia. The movie stars Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone and Danny Huston. [Film Clip] Larry Mantle>> Jean, "The Proposition"? Jean Oppenheimer>> I'm going to pay this film one of the highest compliments I can think of, which is that it reminds me of a Sam Peckinpaugh western. It also has elements and scenes from Shakespeare, from the Bible, even from Dostoyevsky. It's brutally violent. It also has a real lyricism to it. I mean, I must warn people that, if violence bothers you, this is very graphic, very savage. The cinematographer, Benoit Delhomme, conveys, however, an extraordinary sense of these vast expanses of Australia, the sort of unrelenting heat and the dust, and you really get the sense of isolation. I thought all three actors were wonderful. Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone and Danny Huston are just superb and the story has a really strong moral dimension which is something that I always go for. It's a hard one to recommend, but I really thought it was terrific. Larry Mantle>> Peter? Peter Rainer>> Well, I didn't like it as much. There's a lot of sweating and spitting and cussing and heads being blown apart like watermelons, and it's a movie about family values in the end (laughter) gone wrong. There is a Peckinpaugh-like feeling to the best parts of it and it does have all of those other elements that Jean mentioned. But I think that's, in a way, a fluke to some of the pretentiousness as well as to its, you know, so-called character. So I think it's a mixed bag and it is quite violent. Ray Winstone, I think, gives a terrific performance in it, far above I think most of the other members of the cast. Larry Mantle>> And that wraps up another FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC joined by critics Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor and Jean Oppenheimer of New Times. We invite you to join us next week at this same time for another FilmWeek on Life and Times. Val Zavala>> KPCC public radio broadcasts a full hour of FilmWeek Friday mornings at eleven. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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