See the Qatari energy chief's statements yesterday: https://hexbear.net/post/7875589
Locally fuel prices have shot up before any of the actual consequences of the shipping disruption have begun, and I'm temporarily shielded from the real initial shock by domestic production. The 1973 Oil Crisis was a big contributor to cars becoming more efficient and EV technology being re-adopted. My city's bike trail network began construction in response to how many people switched to cycling after it. That initial network, which is much cheaper and faster to construct and easier to maintain than a road, induced demand for a whole socioecological shift in the city's development. Intact concrete panels from the 1980s wind along protected waterways and high-density housing, cleared of snow within hours of a storm by a single pickup truck, with everyone of every age being able to birdwatch in native habitat for free.
Even with the price of electricity increasing for AI slop, I'll pay around $20 to replace 99% of my urban driving this year. Anything within 80km is achievable with the current batteries and those are rapidly advancing, especially in terms of fire safety and recharge time. The experience is the complete opposite of everything I hate about driving. As a tech, it's poised for a Ford Model T moment of mass adoption that we started seeing with COVID. Most of the parts are there and they're waiting on economies of scale to make it into cheaper bikes more than they are new developments.
I think/hope/Timmy-pray that this will be the generational shock in oil and natural gas markets that break people out of car brain. Even if I wanted to trade in my car for an EV to avoid the fuel shortages/prices, the broader economic collapse makes that a pipe dream. People can at least afford something that costs 1/5th-1/10th of what a reliable used car does, and I think this might spiral into a crisis catastrophic enough to spur mass advocacy for the initial bike infrastructure in the places lacking it.
Otherwise I agree with the demons doing it that the war is apocalyptic, but it'd be nice if this is the big one for bicyclists. We might get barriers and happy neighbours.
I'm always wary about this because historically it doesn't really seem to help and you can look at places where it's feasible to ride a bike now and has been for a while which would save you quite some money and people just still don't.
I think at this point via revealed preference as per pricing. Basically nobody but people with accountant brain thinks of things as costing fuel per trip. They just have a monthly fuel cost where every trip gets amalgated into "monthly fuel cost" which seems basically unlinked to "how much do I drive my car". Every time the vibe shift actually happens seems to be related to paying at the point of use, i.e. tolls and parking. This is how Manhattan did it, it's how Paris did it, it's how the Dutch get people to use suburban parking lots with shuttle service and anecdotally I can see it happen in my town everytime free parking is turned into paid parking. The costs are, honestly, negligible but it seems to force people to confront that their car trip isn't actually free. I'm fairly certain if you'd put a "This trip just cost you approximately X Money in fuel!" on the dashboard of cars when you turn them off people would use them a lot less.
Oh yeah and also somebody needs to set up the ford factory for cargo bikes
The big thing with '73 is that it wasn't just fuel cost increases, but shortages too. It's the latter that fucks me up enough to change my consumption whenever it happens, like that huge bump in bidet sales when COVID sparked toilet paper hoarding. I think you're right in the greater drivers of bike adoption being tolls and parking. This is just a unique moment where I think people might have to ask if their current way of life is still practical individually. Normally my fuel cost savings are just a minor perk that I barely notice because I only refill my car a couple times per month at most. If I had a moment where I needed to refuel my car and couldn't, all the security that vehicle gives me evaporates and it suddenly feels very vulnerable.