Endangered species? A gas station on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington.
You’ve no doubt seen the phrase, “degasification,” which refers to the removal of dissolved gases from liquids. Now modern American society is experiencing de-gas stationification, or the removal of gas stations from expensive urban settings.
The Washington Post highlights a trend in the Washington metropolitan area in which gas stations are disappearing from the inner suburbs. “In Arlington County,” writes Katherine Shaver, ” four gas stations have given way to taller buildings in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor over the past decade, and last year, a Shell station closed on Columbia Pike, where the county is planning a streetcar line.” Gas stations are shutting down in Bethesda, Md., as well. In one stretch of Wisconsin Ave., four stations have shut down and the remaining two are being eyed for redevelopment.
Gas stations have been vanishing in cities like New York and downtown Washington for 20 years, Shaver notes, but the phenomenon seems to be spreading geographically, and accelerating due to a decline in gasoline consumption driven by more fuel-efficient cars, a lagging economy and demographic trends in which Millennials and Baby Boomers are driving less. The phenomenon is national in scope:
Nationwide, the number of gas stations has dropped from about 170,000 in 2002 to 156,065 in 2012, according to National Petroleum News. The District had 87 last year, compared with 119 a decade earlier, and Virginia lost about 1,000 stations — a drop from 4,981 to 3,939 — in that time. Last year, Maryland had 1,990 stations, almost 400 fewer than a decade earlier.
But an unappreciated factor could be rising land prices and property taxes. Gas stations take up a lot of space, and the land they sit on often can be more profitably used for offices or high-rises.
The trend raises a big issue for people who rely upon their automobiles for mobility and access. Sometimes they have to drive out of the way to reach a gas station. Surviving gas stations have more market power to price more aggressively. If de-gas stationification continus, the cost of automobile ownership will increase while the convenience of driving will decline. In dense urban areas with high land prices, all other things being equal, the trend could accelerate the shift to alternate modes of transport.
— JAB
