Skip to footer

New York imposes gas rationing. Here's how it works.

New York's new gas rationing system goes into effect with police on hand to ensure it's enforced. Cars with license plates ending in an odd number will be able to fill up Friday. Even-number license plates can fill up Saturday.

|
Mike Segar/Reuters/File
Cars wait in long lines at a Sunoco gas station on the Garden State Parkway in Montvale, N.J., last week. To ease the lines, New Jersey and now New York City and counties in Long Island have instituted odd-even gas rationing.

Gas-rationing in the storm-ravaged greater New York area is spreading. Spurred by the success of New Jersey's gas rationing plan, New York City and two Long Island counties will impose odd-even gas rationing beginning Friday morning.

Since Friday, Nov. 9, is an odd day,  only cars with license plates ending in an odd number or a letter or other character will be able to buy gas. On Saturday, only cars with license plates that end with even numbers or zero will be able to fill up. And so on.

Will it work? The odd-even system appears to have reduced the long lines in neighboring New Jersey following the widespread power outages caused by hurricane Sandy last week. Typical two-hour waits at stations immediately after the storm went down to about 45 minutes after New Jersey instituted a similar odd-even rationing plan, according to news reports.

New York City's new rationing rule "is designed to let everybody have a fair chance, so the lines aren't too oppressive and that we can get through this," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a press conference Thursday.

New York City earlier this week had deployed police to gasoline stations that were open. Now, they'll be on hand to make sure no one cheats. Violators of the odd-even system can be charged with a Class B misdemeanor.

Shortages may last up to another two weeks, the mayor added. Only 25 percent of the city's gas stations are open.

Recovery from the storm was set back temporarily by new power outages caused Wednesday night by the wintry northeaster that hit the same area as Sandy the week before. Among the facilities that lost power was an oil terminal for the Buckeye Pipeline, responsible for bringing some 4.5 million gallons of gas a day into the greater New York area. The pipeline didn't get back its power until Thursday morning.

There's just one caveat: The last time the United States had widespread gas rationing, in 1979, it made a tense situation worse, argues John Sterman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor in his 2000 textbook, "Business Dynamics." Rationing simply reinforced the panicked behavior of drivers, causing more motorists to line up and top off their tanks.

Perhaps the residents of greater New York will prove wiser.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to New York imposes gas rationing. Here's how it works.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2012/1109/New-York-imposes-gas-rationing.-Here-s-how-it-works
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe