[Ann Kellan:] Hello, and welcome. I'm Ann Kellan. Power blackouts, record high gas prices: it was one of those weeks that make you wonder whether it's payback time for the high-tech, consumer lifestyle so many Americans enjoy. In California, hot weather brought a new round of rolling blackouts from a power grid that just couldn't cope. Many people worried that this is a preview of worse outages this summer, when temperatures will stay higher for longer. For many consumers, new electricity rate hikes will show up in next month's bill, so they may be paying more for less. Speaking of paying more: U.S. gas prices hit new highs this past week. In some places, self-serve regular gas cost more than $2 a gallon. And filling up a big SUV or pickup could get into the triple- digits. There are a lot of reasons for rising gasoline prices, and some of them relate to the crunch in electricity supplies. Rusty Dornin reports.
[Rusty Dornin, Cnn Correspondent:] The product from here goes here. But if California's rolling blackouts hit the states's oil refineries, drivers already digging deep for fuel, they'll see the impact here.
[Dan Kamen, University Of California, Berkley:] Skyrocketing gas prices, and you know, three dollars a gallon's not unreasonable number to think about if we have a lot of blackouts, and those refineries are going to go on and off-line all the time.
[Dornin:] The state's gasoline producers were told in April, expect to be part of the rolling blackout list. Here at the Valero plant in Benicia near San Francisco, there are no back up generators. The same is true of about one third of the state's refineries.
[Scott Folwarkow, Valero Energy Corporation:] Normally it takes us a couple of days to shutdown a plant. We can shut it down relatively fast, however, the faster we go, the more questions we have whether you do damage to the process equipment during that rapid shutdown.
[Dornin:] Damaged equipment means plants might not be able to turn the power back on when a temporary blackout is over.
[Folwardow:] You could ultimately be down for many days to many weeks as you try to get the system back up.
[Dornin:] Ten percent of California's clean burning fuel comes this plant. A shutdown for days or weeks could mean short fuel supplies, sure to drive prices even higher. Health and safety reasons keep the lights on at hospitals and emergency agencies were are exempt from blackouts. Economic arguments about skyrocketing fuel prices fall on deaf ears when it comes to the state's public utility commission.
[Carl Wood, California Public Utility Commission:] If we exempt everybody from rolling blackouts, the electrical system in the state will collapse, and that's a much worse catastrophe than anything else that we're facing at the present time.
[Dornin:] California legislators are considering a bill to exempt refineries from power cutoffs. For SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY WEEK, I'm Rusty Dornin.
[Kellan:] Now if gasoline is in short supply, massive traffic jams aren't helping the situation. A report out this week has some sobering figures about just how much time Americans spend sitting in traffic. Natalie Pawelski has the story.
[Natalie Pawelski, Cnn Correspondent:] You're not just imagining it. Traffic is getting worse.
[Unidentified Female:] On a week like this week, I'll be in a car 25, 30 hours.
[Pawelski:] A new study says what was once called rush hour now lasts over three hours in the morning, and another three hours at night. With the average American wasting 36 hours a year stuck in traffic. That's not total travel time; that's just the extra time spent in traffic jams.
[Tim Lomax, Texas Transportation Institute:] The problem really is a situation of, the transportation system hasn't expanded as fast as the transportation demand.
[Pawelski:] Researchers at the Texas Transportation Institute say Los Angeles has the slowest rush hour, with rush-hour trips taking twice as long as off-peak trips. The other cities stuck with the slowest rush hours: Seattle; San Francisco; Washington; Boston; New York; Chicago; Portland; San Diego; and Atlanta.
[Unidentified Male:] I can leave and be at work an hour later, which is 35 miles from here, all of it interstate driving.
[Pawelski:] As for solutions, researchers warn there are no quick fixes.
[Lomax:] New roads are a part of the mix but that isn't all of the solution you need more efficient operations; you have to look at managing the demand, so that everybody doesn't try to get on the roads at the same time.
[Pawelski:] Researchers figure traffic congestion cost $78 billion a year in lost productivity from 4.5 billion hours of wasted time. Also being wasted: 6.8 billion gallons gas a year. And with gas prices continuing to climb, the cost of traffic jams will only increase. For SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY WEEK, I'm Natalie Pawelski.
[Kellan:] Later in the show, could Emus help ease the pain of arthritis? And up next: Meet some people who talk to dolphins and the dolphins who talk back.