We'd do alright for a while. My bikes are powered by cheeseburgers. Our corolla gets 30mpg, and my wife's work is only 2 miles away. My children's school is 1 mile away.
One trip out to China Mart in the burbs every couple weeks and we'd get by. Way better than the commuters, the super commuters, and even regular suburban folks.
I set my life up like this on purpose.

I'd wait once a month. I figure if gas was just used for commuting, that i could easily go a month on a tank (roughly 400miles).
The bikes work and i recentley biked 40miles in 2.5hrs with a long break in there.
Walking from where i live to work is not recommended (i've done it twice--roughly 3hrs because of the out of the way route).
Anyone think that a quota will be put in place for personal use? (say 5gallons a week)

I have 12 minutes on bike between home and work, whith a grocery store halfway between, so I could scrap the car entirely. One of the kids activities would get a little hurt though (gokart). A bit boring, but no big deal directly and personally. Except from the effect on society as such....

Work at home.
Live at home.
Wanna find me?
I'm home...

The same here. I think I might put about 20 to 30 miles a month on my truck. It's just there for hauling dirt, manure and bark.

I have my Toyota Prius and I can go almost 600 miles per tank. 12 gallon tank, so even if there is a limit of 5 gallons/week or such rationing, that still will get me 250 miles. I have identified 3 co-workers who live within 2 miles of me. We could easily meet in a common location for carpool.

Within 3 miles of my home I have a grocery store and my office, so I could get by with a bicycle for a long time. My closest friend is only 5 miles away, and a shopping mall is about 6 miles. I use a motor scooter that gets 80 mpg for most of those short trips. I still need the car, though - there' no other way to transport largish objects, passengers, etc., and it's the only way to cover longer distances to the nearest city, friend's places, distant stores. So, yeah, I'll be lining up for gas, just less frequently than most people.

I wonder, though, if gas lines really are in the future. Consider this: making people queue up for gas isn't going to stretch the supply. Instead, given limited supply, either the price needs to go up to the point people don't buy as much, or (given government price limits) there will be a shortage and some people will end up without any gas to buy. This is what leads to gas lines - the fear that if you don't get some right away, there won't be any left by the time you go. Of course anyone at the head of a line will, at some point, need to re-enter the line at the end anyway, so you might wonder
what's the point. And hence the line - people refill more frequently in a futile attempt to stave off disaster.

Lines won't stretch the supply, so what will? Assuming the government doesn't want to let pricing do the dirty work, rationing is the only answer. The current government will let pricing work for a while, but at some point cries from the lower income elements of society will cause them (or the next government) to step in with some form of rationing. In the 70s there was rationing where you got a fixed number of gallons based on the number of cylinders in your vechicle. They also did the odd/even license thing just to thin out the lines (didn't work). 70s-style rationing isn't very fair because it rewards people with gas-guzzlers by giving them more gas. I think we will see a return to WW2-style rationing with coupon books.
Ideally, it would also allow those of us who use relatively little gas to sell or give away our unused coupons to our friends.

I have been a bicycle commuter for almost 10 years now and we are a one-car (minivan) family. My wife works part time from our house doing transcribing when the kids are napping. We recently moved closer to my work and to an area that is currently re-developing the downtown into a walkable and bikable community. Virtually everything we need we can access by walking or bicycling.
Bicyclecommuter bikes not bombs!

I could stay out of the gas lines were it not for the fact that my job is 25 miles away.

I've been getting 50mpg on my motorcycle so commuting wouldn't be too bad, but for the occasional china mart run with the truck I would need to fill er up now and then... probably could adapt to super early or late fill ups to avoid the worst of it I suppose.

-G

My 50cc scooter goes at about 100 mpg, so I'll simply fill the car tank only once to go on for WEEKS.

I'm around 3 miles from town. if the busses stop running we'll bike. I recently got my kids new bikes so we are set. I also have a 49cc scooter that works once in a while if I need too.

I work and play at home too; but I wonder if I would be working on designer-boy stuff very long in that case. I would probably wind up really working at home!
I suppose the price would be a bigger problem than the lines. I imagine gas prices doubling or tripling would keep the lines down some. Now we make a trip to the little town – 6 miles, at least a couple times a week for milk, libations, misc hardware, blah, but we certainly wouldn’t be spending that much money should real shortages occur. It would be milk from the dairy next door, libations from the vine and recycled hardware!

We could easily get by with a run to town every 4-6 weeks and a trip to Sams (45 miles) every 3-6 months -
That is if we had the cash to run and any left to spend when we got there!
{thought I had posted this already – wonder which thread it went on, LOL}

But my cheeseburgers are powered by oil. Doh!
I know it's not the point of this thread, but there's an overemphasis on "price at the pump" in the public view of the consequences peak oil.
I live and work in San Francisco which at 49 square miles is easy to navigate by bicycle. And I have a slick new fixed-gear track bike which makes it fun as well. But this is a small consolation to me. I am as dependent on cheap oil as anyone around.

Walking to work today I saw an add for the SF Examiner, that showed a picture depicting rising gas prices and said something like: "What's your boiling point?"
It struck me that this was such a dumb, and typically American, reaction to what is happening. Complete focus on how this will inconvenience me, no conception of the reciprocity between the world situation and my behavior, and mainly who can I blame for my personal frustration?

Gas lines were a large consequence of the 1970's oil crisis, but I think they will play less of a roll in the one we are about to experience. The gas you put in your car is just such a minor part of the whole picture.

i doubt that lines will form if many can't pay for it.
Between the government subsidy of gas ending, oil prices, and layoffs, i doubt that cars will be anywhere but parked.
Bicycles are the best invention ever.