Thanks to Graham who has pointed out that there is some very good material on public transport and peak oil at the current public transport enquiry:

Inquiry into into the investment of Commonwealth and State funds in public passenger transport infrastructure and services

For example, Paul Mees and Graham Currie at the Melbourne session and James Buckee, Peter Newman and Bruce Robinson at the Perth session.

No time for a complete Bullroarer, but this piece of research from Garry Glazebrook at UTS in Sydney deserves coverage:

Sydney transport 'needs $1b a year'

A study by the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) has found Sydneysiders and the NSW Government spent more than $40 billion on cars in 2006, making them by far the most expensive form of transport in the city.

Almost $23 billion was spent on fuel, maintenance, depreciation, insurance, tolls and parking in 2006.

The city's motorists generated a further $18.1 billion in "externality costs" such as congestion, pollution, accidents and subsidies for roads and parking.

Garry Glazebrook, author of the report on the study, published in the Urban Policy and Research Journal, said the NSW Government spent just $3 billion a year on public transport each year.

How can we cut our energy use for commuting? What methods are working for you? What methods make most sense in our current credit environment? This is mostly an open thread, to give people an opportunity to talk about what is and isn't working for them. If the economy is sputtering, peak oil is around the corner, and hurricane related shortages are becoming more common, these methods are going to more and more important in the days ahead.

Some ideas that have been suggested include:

1. More work at home plans, possibly a few days a week.

Crikey has a series of articles on "oil, the future and you", with the first installment featuring Adam Grubb of Energy Bulletin (which has the full text for non-Crikey subscribers).

The high price of petrol today is causing discomfort among motorists. So much so that our federal politicians have spent almost a week haggling over whose scheme is best suited to knocking a few cents per litre from the pump price.

But in a world where oil is increasingly scarce, where the security of supply remains a problem, and where the environmental cost of using fossil fuels to power your car is soon to be factored into the pump price, is that the right response? What are the long terms solutions to our oil dependence? And is this the beginning of a new era of high-priced oil?

Crikey asked a panel of experts to answer questions on the good old days of cheap oil, what the politicians should really be arguing about, and how our economy will look when petrol costs many dollars per litre.

Today, Adam Grubb, the Australian editor of Energy Bulletin, answers Crikey’s questions.