Word: pumps
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...professional drivers are already getting a taste of gas-pump privation. On the first gasless Sunday, an estimated 90% of the nation's filling-station operators obeyed President Nixon's call to shut down between 9 p.m. Saturday and midnight Sunday. Whether the closings actually saved much-or any-fuel is questionable. Some stations did double their normal business on Saturday, then ran dry in the early-Monday rush. "It's just like the run on nylons in World War II," said a Boston attendant. Highways were nearly emptied in some areas; toll takers on Chicago expressways...
...unusual number of heedless motorists were stranded when they ran out of gas. Members of the Illinois Gasoline Dealers Association in Chicago banded together to deliver three gallons to each motorist who called, charging the pump price plus a $5 service fee and a $5 donation to the American Cancer Society. Their "hot line" logged more than 500 calls. Tow trucks on Los Angeles freeways dispensed so much fuel that by nightfall they were out and could only push cars off the roadway...
Also: KP&L has not replied to a July request from the Army Corps of Engineers that it apply for a permit to pump water from the Kansas River to their plant five miles away; the Environmental Protection Agency and the Bureau of Mines have questioned KP&L's estimate of the sulfur content of the coal for the plant; and, KP&L's own estimate that the plant will burn 1600 tons of coal per hour, take and never return over one-third of the volume of water in the Kansas River, and dump 60,000 tons of sulfur...
Every driver might get a card entitling him to purchase a stated, small ration and pay the current gasoline taxes. If he bought additional gallons, the Government would tax him heavily at the pump. Everyone would be assured of a basic supply, but people who needed or wanted more could buy it, and the Government would collect additional revenue. Prices would rise, too, under this plan-or indeed any plan...
Neither the white market nor the rationing-plus-taxes plan is perfect. Both would preserve freedom of choice at the social cost of basing access to the gas pump at least partly on income. But given the nightmare complexities of war-type rationing and the inequities of limiting driving solely by taxation or higher prices, one or the other seems worth...