Because we love rankings, we now find that even though the District is doing well on sustainability indicators, it may not do too well if an oil crisis hits.

According to the folks at SustainLane.com (yep, the sustainability ranking people), the District isn’t among the 10 cities that would effectively handle a dramatic jump to $100 barrels of oil. Based primarily on measures of how well people could get around in such circumstances, the site found that New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland, Honolulu, Seattle, Baltimore, and Oakland would best manage such a crisis.

It’s not hard to see how badly we’d get screwed in such circumstances — given the number of people that flood into the city on a daily basis for work and the fact that the region’s gas prices are some of the nation’s highest, a sudden energy crunch would force many more onto the Metro. And given the current state of crowding on the Metro, it would take 12-car trains every 2 minutes to handle the human crush. But trains that large don’t fit in stations, nor does the system have enough railcars to put that many trains out at a time. Of course, many of the cities on the list would suffer the same problem, so we’re guessing that the District probably ranked just beyond the top 10.

Spare a war with Iran, oil prices probably won’t hit $100 a barrel anytime soon, if ever. OPEC member countries have agreed that producers and consumers best benefit when the price remains between $40-50 per barrel, so for now, crisis averted. But that doesn’t mean that legislators shouldn’t keep looking for alternative sources of energy. If they don’t and a crisis does hit, just imagine the bitch it’ll be to jump on the Orange Line at East Falls Church at rush-hour.