One cool thing about working at home: today I tanked up my car for the first time since moving to Boulder over three weeks ago… and it wasn’t anywhere near full when we got here.
Still. Gas prices have dropped in recent days, but am I supposed to be grateful? It was $49 to put 15 gallons into my tank.
Interestingly, the price of gas was about $1.46/gallon on January 20, 2001. Just so’s you know. Not that I think that’s all there is to it, of course — things are always complicated. But I do find it interesting.
Before you ask, due to inflation $1.46 had the same buying power in 2001 as $1.71 does today. That’s a lot less than the $3.15 I just paid.
June 18th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
I just paid over $3.00 per gallon for the first time as well as paying over $50 to fill the whole tank (also for the first time).
Two consolations: I too, work from home, so I don’t have to fill up very often, and it could be much worse–gas in the UK is almost 1.00GBP per liter, which is about $7.00 per US gallon.
Remember that when you wince as your flex your plastic at the gas pump next time.
June 18th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
A buck twentyfive per liter is pretty standard out here. The other thing you need to remember is that the US dollar is devaluing, so as long as y’all are buying oil from the rest of the world, the price will stay high in US currency.
June 18th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
p.s. BA, is there malware in some of your ads? Every time I come to your site it opens microsoft outlook express and tries to send spam emails…
June 18th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
I don’t think so, LL. The ads are from Google, and they’re pretty scrupulous. It’s possible there is some sort of trojan in the PHP for Wordpress, but I haven’t heard of anything on the WP blog. I’ll poke around.
June 18th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
$3.15 and you’re complaining? In Germany we currently pay about $6.65 for the gallon, and adjusting for buying power doesn’t do a whole lot to reduce the difference.
June 18th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
I was helping my mother go through some old papers last weekend. Among them were my father’s pay stubs and the gas credit card slips from way back. In June 1967 (IIRC), my Father was making $4.25 an hour as an operating engineer and 44.9 cents a gallon was a typical price for gas.
I’m currently making $32.17 an hour as an operating engineer. My father was a finish blade man and I run an asphalt plant, but they both pay the same and did in ‘67 also. So, a little arithmetic … 32.17/4.25= 7.569 x .449 = 3.398.
If this is typical, and from what I know about plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. I think it is. It appears the increase in wage rates for skilled craftsmen and the increase in gas prices is pretty similar.
I know this is oversimplified. To be truly rigorous about it, I’d have to include benefit packages, tax rates, and lots of other things I’m too lazy to look up right now. I think if I did, I’d come out close enough to the same answer not to matter.
June 18th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
It’s expensive sure, but is it expensive enough? It’s still cheaper than we pay for milk, coffee or bottled water so this slight increase is just the first step towards bringing price in line with the true cost.
Cheap gas comes at a stiff price and the biggest prices aren’t paid at the pump.
June 18th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
My daily driver is a Dodge Caliber that gets 36 mpg highway. Not bad for a standard gas four banger with a little cargo room. I just didn’t like the curent generation of hybrid tech.
But you can have my ‘05 Mustang GT when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
I’ve just decided to go with the folks who say we have 400 years of oil left if you account for all known reserves. Even oil shales should become profitable at *some* point, you’d think.
>>> In Germany we currently pay about $6.65 for the gallon,
Isn’t as lot of that taxes, though? I know in France about 60% of the price is taxes. Here in California it’s about 20%. The negative is that the raw cost of crude oil affects our prices more directly, so we have sharper price spikes and valleys than you have over there.
So I’m not happy with the currrent rates, but having a greater perspective I only mutter a bit.
June 18th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
>> That’s a lot less than the $3.15 I just paid.
> In Germany we currently pay about $6.65 for the gallon,
Sweden today, $6.45 a gallon.
June 18th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
United Kingdom, lots per gallon. Not sure exactly how much, but it’s usually eighty-something pence per litre at the moment, which is about $1.50ish. How many litres in a US gallon?
Ours does come with a very hefty load of tax, but oil prices have pushed the price up generally. I always hoped that by the time I needed to buy a car, I would be able to avoid petrol. Now I’m 25, going to have to buy one soon, and my best choice is a hybrid. I’m highly disappointed.
June 18th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
We’re all spoiled, is what. Petroleum is ridiculously cheap really - it just bubbles straight out of the ground! We get millions of years of processing for free!
Of course, the catch is that we’ve used up millions of years of oil in about one century.
And most anything we replace oil with, will be more expensive. Bio-fuel, for example, has to be grown first, you don’t just drill a tube into the earth and wait. And it needs as much or more processing and refining as oil needs before it becomes gasoline or diesel.
Before we all shuffle off this mortal coil, we’re gonna be paying a lot more for just about everything (even after inflation adjustments) because everything depends on transport costs, which mostly depend on oil costs.
And, having spread cheer and happiness here, I shall bid you good day.
June 18th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
MaW Says: “How many litres in a US gallon?”
3.785
June 18th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Boo effing hoo.. In Denmark today, gas prices are $6.80/gallon. Our government is currently taking steps to reduce CO2-emission and that includes plans for further taxes on gas.
I’ve just been to the States (visiting Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio). You lot are very open and welcoming and I had a really nice time. But one of the things that made me think a LOT was that I didn’t see a SINGLE car with a smaller engine than a V6 2.0 litres. And I saw a disturbing amount of oversize trucks. That’s some gas-guzzling monsters you drive..!
It really makes me think. We are getting taxed up the wazoo in the name of emission-reductions all the while 200 million americans seems to be using gas like there’s no tomorrow. If we are going to try to save this planet, someone really has to do some attitude-adjusting..
So seriously… Stop whining..!
June 18th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Pushing $8/gallon recently, hefty taxes on car purchase, and hefty taxes on car ownership (heavier car means more tax). Getting to the point where owning even a single car is a luxury
June 19th, 2007 at 12:21 am
To add another datapoint to the set of European petrol prices, I did the math for the UK the other day. The commonly advertised price of 99.9p ($1.85) per litre equals approximately $7.50 per US gallon.
I am a little surprised that Phil doesn’t have a wider view, especially given his profession
June 19th, 2007 at 12:31 am
The US is so wasteful in its cars and their engines. It’s one thing to have a big car, another to put a 6 liter engine in it. Why not put a 2 or 3 liter engine in the truck? It never gets used anyway for more than 1 or 2 people at a time. It’s just a weird macho like wasteful way of consumption. There is no sense to it at all. Just the biggest car possible with the biggest engine possible. Hardly no diesel engines in trucks…..
Then US made cars have very poor engines. They are big nut they are not very good at getting some power out. European or Japanese cars tend to get more power out of smaller engines.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:01 am
That’s still ridiculously cheap. I moved over here a couple of years back and I’m still amazed that I can fill up my car for less than $30 when it used to cost 30 pounds back in Britain. Even British prices aren’t as high as they need to be to be effective in discouraging people from driving when there are alternatives though as the government hasn’t got the gumption to actually take on the motoring lobby.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Your complaints aboout the price of fuel fall on deaf ears here too. Currently in Sydney, Australia we are payng about $1.40 AUD per litre (ie $6.37 AUD per gallon — or $5.35 USD per gallon)
At 4.55 litres to the gallon, in USD your 15 gallons = 68 litres would have cost nearly $81- USD here. Only the small matter of being $32 dearer.
Think yourself lucky!
Les Dalrymple
June 19th, 2007 at 3:39 am
I’m glad Phil mentioned that things were more complicated than he goes into in his post. Gas prices and whining about them have become part of the US’s culture, and any politician will commit political suicide by suggesting that high gas prices are one way of cutting greenhouse emmisions. Americans are used to doing things big, and companies have learned to profit from that (has anyone heard of the SUV Owners of America? [http://suvoa.com/]). Another part of the culture where I live (DC Metro area) is the morning complaint about the traffic. Gas prices as a portion of family income have been steadily going down, and the status symbol of owning a tank-sized car has gone up. Throw in tailor-made gasolines required in some areas but now allowed in others and an occasional supply-interrupting natural disaster or political incident and I continue to be glad that I’m not in charge.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:44 am
A couple of points:
First, most European prices for gas include a large amount of tax, so a lot of what you’re paying for at the gas pump isn’t the gas itself.
Second, my first point notwithstanding, there are large subsidies on gasoline in the US. I read somewhere that if you include the price of those subsidies, the real cost of a gallon of gas in the US is about $16. (IOW, when you’re wasting gas in that monster truck with only the driver commuting 30 miles to work, we are all paying for it)
Third, the real price of gas today is very close to the real price paid in the late 70s. Remember all the talk about alternative energy that was promptly forgotten
in the don’t-tell-me-anything-I don’t-want-to hear 80s? If an excise tax had been used to keep the pump price high, with revenues taking the burden off of other taxes, we would be driving much more efficient vehicles.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:57 am
HAHA! Dubya is in ur country, raisin ur gas pricez!
Seriously though….
http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/gasolinepricesprimer/eia1_2005primerM.html
June 19th, 2007 at 4:13 am
Folks might be interested in The Cost of Gasoline around the World; Gasoline Prices – Part I: Immediate Causes and Gasoline Prices Part II: Long-Term Factors, all from The Oil Drum.
June 19th, 2007 at 4:38 am
We’re up to about $7 per gallon here (in Belgium), and I’m quite happy with that. Most of the price is environmental taxes, and we have an excellent and cheap public transportation system, so the usual complaints of the poor getting screwed doesn’t work.
I personally wouldn’t mind if gas prices doubled.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:01 am
All this concern about Global warming and then a winge about gas prices!
Have a look at Ford focus (US version) compared with Ford Focus (international version) on wikipedia. Is there any good reason why the largest engine on the international version is the same size as the smallest engine for the US model. Sorry guys, I know it’s a bitter pill to swallow but these things going to change until you get stung with some European petrol prices.
Personally I’m happy with my push bike, far more macho to get by on muscle power rather than driving around in some huge yank tank
and efficient too, apparently if cyclists drank petrol they’d do 750 miles to the gallon (though I prefer pasta).
June 19th, 2007 at 5:08 am
I think the real point here isn’t that gas prices are ridiculously high. It’s more that the price increase has been absurd. I remember when I first got my car eight years ago, I would pay 99 cents (less than one dollar!) for a gallon of gas. Three years ago, I actually felt dirty the first time I spent more than 2 dollars per gallon to fill up my car. Today, I saw a gas station at $2.80 for regular and thought that was cheap! So in eight years of car ownership, I saw the price of gas increase almost three-fold?
I see a lot of people outside the US on this board telling people like me to shut up because you have to pay closer to 7 dollars per gallon. I understand that as a spoiled American, I really shouldn’t bitch when things might suck worse somewhere else. What I’m really curious about, and maybe people here can respond to this… have gas prices increased at the same rate in every country around the world? Really, we shouldn’t argue about which country has it worse, because this is a gripe we have in common.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:36 am
Northern California… $2.95 a gallon for “regular”.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:40 am
I seem to remember not so long ago the prices in the UK being around $3.50 a gallon. At the time I considered that to be absurdly more than what was being paid in the US. If my memory is accurate, then prices have indeed skyrocketed in, at least, the UK.
I last checked the gas prices here on Friday, and it was CAN$1.25 per litre. That’s about US$5.20 per gallon. 14 years ago the price of gas in Alberta was CAN43 cents per gallon (I remember because I had just moved provinces), and the dollar was worth far less than it is now, hence it use to cost far more to import oil. And yeah, Canada imports most of its oil. All of our oil gets sold to the US to stop them from invading us (so not a joke. Wanna see the world’s fastest invasion? Have the Canadian PM threaten to cut off all electricity and oil exports to the US).
June 19th, 2007 at 5:44 am
The dollar/pound exchange rate has always been wonky, and is only really relevant if you’re traveling between the US and UK. One pound in the UK has about the same buying-power as one dollar in the US.
But the truth is, adjusted for inflation, US gas prices have just barely surpassed the heights of the OPEC crisis of the ’70s, and the $1.46 you paid in 2001 was near the historic low in adjusted dollars.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:55 am
I am paying $2.79 a gallon here in East Texas.
June 19th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Re the increase in gas prices; in Denmark at least the price of gas has gone up from DKK 8,00 / litre to the current DKK 10,42 / litre in the course of about 5 years. Thats a 30% increase in that time (if I’m remembering my math correctly…). Inflation is not accounted for.
Granted that is not as large an increase as Phil describes, but I don’t think this disqualifies my earlier sentiments.
What really shocks me is the talk about the US government needing to step in to stop the rise in gas prices.. What about trying to reduce the consumption of gas instead? Maybe that is just me forgetting about the oil lobby…
June 19th, 2007 at 6:11 am
In one of my favorite “Daily Show” segments, Jon Stewart shows a map of the world of countries where gas is cheaper than in the US. Every country is the color of “more expensive” and the US is the only country that’s a different color.
Every time is read or hear a news segment of US politicians or consumers complaining about how expensive gasoline is getting, it makes me cringe.
June 19th, 2007 at 6:13 am
Marshalldog wrote:
“What I’m really curious about, and maybe people here can respond to this… have gas prices increased at the same rate in every country around the world?”
Let me tell you two years ago I was paying 90 cents per litre, now it is $1.40-. The taxes while high, were frozen about 18 mths ago and haven’t grown. But the price continues to spiral.
Re the comment by Cairnarvon:
“I personally wouldn’t mind if gas prices doubled.”
I can understand that comment from an individual who lives in a country (Belgium) where you can drive across the whole nation in a couple of hours. Australia is a little different (and to a large extent so is the U.S). In the time it takes you to drive from one side of Belgium to the other, I can probably cross Sydney from outer metro area to outer metro area.
Cars are essential here. Most of the public transport is overpriced and poorly administered — it isn’t that much dearer to drive, and driving is expensive!
June 19th, 2007 at 6:14 am
Oh yeah.. Maybe americans should start buying and using bikes. In the 10 days I spent in the beautiful Sandusky area I saw a total of 3 bikes. That’s less than I see in about 15 seconds if I look out my window right now..
June 19th, 2007 at 6:43 am
$4.00 for a gallon is an outrage. But $5.00 for a 10-oz cup of Starbucks is perfectly okay with so many people for some reason…
June 19th, 2007 at 6:47 am
A good part of the problem for the US is the way the US has been developed. New York, DC, Chicago, and San Fransisco are among the few places in the US that are built in a way that makes mass transit feasable. The vast majority of populated areas are sprawled out, making walking, biking, or taking mass transit impractical or impossible.
I do a lot of highway driving. I want a safe car too. So, driving a tiny little car is out. As much as I am interested in that 1/2 size two-seater I’ve seen around Europe, I want a substantial frame to protect me and a substantial engine to help me avoid crashes in the first place. All of this costs fuel.
June 19th, 2007 at 6:55 am
Les Dalrymple makes an excellent point. Almost all U.S. cities are constructed around the assumption that everybody owns cars. Much of the real estate in most American cities wasn’t inhabited before cars became ubiquitous. Millions of Americans simply can’t get to work on a bicycle. The bike paths are bad or non-existent, the distances are too long, and sometimes you even get people in their cars trying to run you off the road. This is certainly the case in Albuquerque, which is one of the few cities that’s actually made an attempt to provide decent bike paths. In a city like L.A., it is quite impossible to ride a bike to work. Not difficult; impossible.
The only viable answer is probably public transportation. The main problem there is that in almost every American city, it’s very poorly organized. If you take the bus to work you will be late fairly often. Sometimes the bus won’t even show up. If you have to work late, you could easily still be working when the last bus leaves your stop. Several cities are trying to fix this, but at the moment the vast majority of Americans aren’t much interested in taking public transit. And how do you handle the many Americans who prefer to live in a small town and commute those 60 miles to work? Most cities here are surrounded by communities of several dozen houses at a comfortable distance from the city itself. It may not be economical to run a bus through every last one of them.
I certainly think our city planners were short-sighted. That’s pretty irrelevant, though, when you’re trying to actually solve the problem we’re currently in.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:09 am
gotta say Phil, you’re living in the People’s Republic of Boulder, where high prices should NOT be a surprise. I was born and raised there and every time I come back (about once a year) I’m amazed at a) housing prices and b) gas prices. Drive a few miles up the road to Lafayette, Louisvile, etc., and the prices are more “reasonable… ”
I, too, work at home and sometimes it takes me a month or so to run through a tank of gas. Heck, it has taken me almost two years to put 8k miles on my “new” car. The older I get, the greener I get.
A little travel in the rest of the world will confirm what many posters here have already pointed out: gas is a darned sight more expensive nearly everywhere else except the U.S.
Still, I’d like to see us all going after fuel alternatives more heavily than we are. Buying a safe, fuel-efficient vehicle should be possible. Why some U.S. carmakers don’t want to do that is a matter of considerable interest.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:29 am
if the oil is for your daily commute to work and you live in a city the answer is simple get the bus, ride a bike or share the burden with a neighbor(carpool).
Its absurd to drive a car in a city where distances are likely not that far and there is public transport to get you there. Drop your ego sell your status-symbol.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Y’all should go diesel and then convert to run on biodiesel or straight vegetable oil. There’s a coop in Denver called Denver Biodiesel that meets every first Saturday of the month at the Mercury Cafe at 2 pm. They’re recently changing hands and are setting down new rules of membership. Want to be a part of the change? If you run on SVO it’ll be about a dollar a gallon w/ membership… maybe $1.50 w/o.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:59 am
“Drive a few miles up the road to Lafayette, Louisvile, etc., and the prices are more “reasonable… —
Heh. Don’t count on it. At least I haven’t noticed any real difference driving a few miles up the road to Longmont.
Another point to keep in mind: people have stated that European gas prices include about 60% of taxes. Run the numbers and see what that makes the pre-tax cost. I usually end up higher than the US price, including our “onerous” gas taxes. Clearly not a simple equation, then…
June 19th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Heh.
As I was writing this entry, I was wondering what folks from other countries would say.
I know it’s more expensive everywhere else; I’ve made that point myself. Milk is more expensive than gas in many places here in the US!
My point was that the price has gone up substantially since 2001, far faster than inflation, which I find curious — many of our top Administrative executives in the government are oil people. While I lament the fact that gas is so cheap, making it hard to quit using our cars, if it goes up too quickly it can damage our economy, since shipping will become vastly more expensive as well. However, if people start to really hurt at the pump, maybe we’ll invest more in nuclear power and the alternatives.
And gas in Boulder is still cheaper than it was in northern California. I biked to work a lot because of that!
June 19th, 2007 at 8:39 am
BA, I’m trying to determine which of the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe top 20 logical fallacies you are committing. Is it “Confusing Association with Causation” or “Post-Hoc ergo propter hoc”? I can’t quite determine it.
June 19th, 2007 at 8:51 am
I bike nearly everywhere: school, work, the store, etc. I keep trying to get my boyfriend to do the same. Even in this heat, biking is better for me and the environment. I take the bus when it’s raining or I don’t have my bike.
I drive a Ford Explorer that I bought in 2004. I bought it because I was constantly going back and forth between school and home with a large dog, a rabbit cage, and suitcases to visit family 1-5 hours away. At the time it made sense. It still does, sometimes. I would love for public transportation to be easier - I would visit friends in other areas of NC more often if it were cheaper to get there.
However, the thing that really ticks me off is that commercials for new cars are so excited about the 25mpg or 30mpg the cars get, now. Didn’t cars get that kind of mileage back in the day, too? Or better? I mean, come on - we can make a more fuel efficient engine…
June 19th, 2007 at 10:33 am
My 1980 Blazer(curb weight 4500 lbs.) gets around 14 mpg. I still drive it because I can’t see spending 15 to $ 25000 for a new car which only gets twice as good millage. I only put about 6000 miles per year on the truck, so fuel costs(at $1285/year and $3.00/gallon) aren’t a significant problem. If I could modify the vehicle to run on a completely rechargeable battery system, for less than $10,000, it MIGHT be economically feasible to make the upgrade. That type of conversion may come but likely only if fuel prices make an all electric much more economically attractive.
Note that when I last worked in Saudi Arabia(1990) gas there was 30 cents per gallon. I expect it’s not that much higher today,,,
The major, national, oil producers must walk a tight rope, between raising fuel costs so high they impact world economic development or keeping them so low the oil producers are screwed by world wide inflation.
High prices encourage alternative energy production. Solar cells are becoming increasingly attractive as production rises and efficiency increases but they will require a major shift in how we USE the energy in order to make all that enviro. safe energy production useful.
Yes, Americans ARE spoiled. We likes our cars big, powerful and fast. It’s a freedom thing, Y’All,,,and yes, there are few cities compact enough to allow for usable public transit. In Los Angeles it takes 2.5 hours to travel 20 miles by bus.
GAry 7
June 19th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Smaller cars. Smaller engines. It’s not rocket science. Anyway, why would oil companies build more refineries? Everybody is wanting to use less of their products and tax it. The government wants to move to biofuels. Building a refinery can easily take 10 years. No way of saying the market will be there for the gasoline. Prices are up and they are unlikely to go down.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:09 am
>>> I didn’t see a SINGLE car with a smaller engine than a V6 2.0 litres
FWIW, my Caliber has 2.0L 4-cylinder with the continuously variable transmission you see in some hybrids. It’s actually beating the crap out of the EPA estimates. I hear Dodge is selling a lot of them in Europe.
I *hoping* for higher gas prices here in the US, but I have to admit to selfish reasoning. I think it will cut down on freeway traffic at some point.
People need to relax a bit. Science and tech will deliver. There’s starting to be a profit motive in addressing people’s desires to be green. That’s why the last thing you want to do is hobble your economy.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Take a look at this chart that shows gas prices in adjusted dollars. Prices in 2001 were about as far below the historic average as current prices are above, so by choosing it as your reference point you’re cherry-picking the data. Prices have certainly spiked in the last few years, but people think it’s worse than it is because we’ve gone from one extreme to the other.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
“Les Dalrymple makes an excellent point. Almost all U.S. cities are constructed around the assumption that everybody owns cars. Much of the real estate in most American cities wasn’t inhabited before cars became ubiquitous. Millions of Americans simply can’t get to work on a bicycle. The bike paths are bad or non-existent, the distances are too long, and sometimes you even get people in their cars trying to run you off the road. This is certainly the case in Albuquerque, which is one of the few cities that’s actually made an attempt to provide decent bike paths. In a city like L.A., it is quite impossible to ride a bike to work. Not difficult; impossible.”
Repeated for truth. I live in Phoenix and would love to bike to work. But I also don’t want to get hit by a car and die. The entire city is made for cars and is sprawled out to the point where single blocks are sometimes 1 or 2 miles long. No biking or walking, and public transit is a joke here.
So, there’s a reason that you hear Americans complaining about high gas prices that are only half or less of what the rest of the world pays–many of us have no other choice. It sucks and needs to be changed, but the fact of the matter is that gas at $3 per gallon is painful for a lot of people in the US. If it ever gets higher we’re going to see economic disruption–not because we’re all spoiled idiots (though I’ll admit that could be a part of it), but because we have few other transit options available.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
It is true that there are some places that are more bicycle friendly… I happen to live in a very hippie town - bikes and bikepaths are everywhere. But I still get the occasional “run her off the road!!” idiot in a car… I make myself as visible as possible, follow all traffic laws, and do my best to not cut off drivers in the event I have to turn left or something. However, there are still times when I’m pretty sure somebody is trying to knock me over or run me off the road. I’ve driven in Phoenix (my parents lived in Mesa) - it’s a nightmare! Not just the heat, but the fact that people don’t know how to drive there is scary. It’s mostly flat, which is nice, but I probably wouldn’t risk biking, either. Not until I harassed the local government enough to make it safer for pedestrians/cyclists.
It truly is sad that we are so… so… mean? Wasteful? Ignorant? Rude? I dunno, take your pick, I guess.
Shame, shame on US.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
MarshallDog Says: ” I see a lot of people outside the US on this board telling people like me to shut up because you have to pay closer to 7 dollars per gallon. I understand that as a spoiled American, I really shouldn’t bitch when things might suck worse somewhere else.”
I wouldn’t dare suggest that. Our countries differ way too much to make such remarks on a whim. All I intended was to give a reference to what it’s like elsewhere. (And to your other question, yes the prices have skyrocketed here too in the last several years).
June 19th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Sean, if I had looked over the data first and then picked my starting point, that would be cherry picking. As it was, I had the date in mind first. Click the link in the entry to see why.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
It isn’t gas is expensive, dollars are becoming worthless. The dollar is in freefall. The canadian Loonie is nearly on par with the U.S. dollar something that hasn’t occured since 1976.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
“Almost all U.S. cities are constructed around the assumption that everybody owns cars.”
That’s true enough, and it’s a fine explanation of why American cities are so poorly designed, but it isn’t a good reason for continuing with policies that support the problem. Instead of waiting for gas prices to rise due to scarcity, apply some real gas taxes. The tax money can be used to fund public transit, there would be popular demand for better city design when there’s time enough to do something, and it may reverse the trend of buying gas guzzlers.
BA and others brought up the economic damage high gas prices can bring. Sure. But that’s inevitable. By keeping gas prices low, you are encouraging/supporting the problem which got you into this mess: SUVs, suburban sprawl, and single-occupant vehicles. The longer that gas prices stay low (and $3/gallon is still low), the more SUVs go on the road, the more the suburbs sprawl, and the worse the impact will be when people seriously address the problem.
Let’s face it: there is going to be a big economic impact coming. It’s unavoidable. What we can do is try to reduce the impact, and the easiest way to do that is raise the gas tax and fund mass transit. At least when $6/gallon or $8/gallon hits, the communities will get some revenues to cope with the change.
June 19th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Ok, I have to comment here. I now live about 1.5 miles from my workplace. I was telling myself 6 months ago that I should have another option but for me, biking is out. Im over 50 yrs and not in perfect health so, I decided a small motor bike might be the ticket. Two weeks ago, I purchased a 49cc scooter and have begun driving it to work. It gets about 60mpg and is a real hoot to drive. My other vehicle is a Chevy TrailBlazer. Yep, I know..a Yank Tank SUV. However, I would just love to see some of you folks who are complaining about these vehicles get thru 2 feet of snow on a bicycle. Come on, show me. This last year was one of the worst I can remember here in Colorado and we had, no kidding, 5 blizzards in about 8 weeks. The snow and ice didnt melt off for months. I’ll keep my paid-for TrailBlazer with the 20k miles on it. I want to be able to get to the grocery store next winter.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Les, your calculations on equivalence with Australia are wrong. BA is talking US gallons (3.78 litres) not imperial gallons (4.55 litres), a difference of about 17%.
June 19th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Denver - 60mpg sounds really low for a 49cc scooter. My 1967 Honda CB160 got better than 100mpg with an engine over 3 times as big.
Les Dalrymple (and everyone else) I think you might have been using imperial gallons rather than US gallons in your calculation, which makes your gas a
little cheaper, or US gas a little more expensive. 1 US gallon = 3.785 liters
1 Imperial gallon = 4.545 liters
Sounds like most of the world is paying over double US prices, Australia gets off easy with about 1.5 times US price.
I agree US gas taxes should probably be raised a lot to encourage efficiency and to reduce the cross-subsidies (pro-rate the cost of the Iraq war per gallon!) not to mention highway construction and maintenance, hidden subsidies to oil companies, etc, etc. $16 sounds like a lot to me, but I’ve seen $8 or so cited as the true cost. But it would be political suicide to try to raise gas taxes. Lots of politicians are talking about *lowering* gas taxes (which is just a direct transfer to oil companies), and a few years ago some one (Kerry?) was rumored to be in favor of a 50 cent raise in the gas tax and had to back-pedal furiously.
A guy I know is slowly losing his vision due to a hereditary condition. (Not sure exactly what, but it sets in your 20’s or 30’s and takes 20 or more years to go completely blind.) He had to stop driving about 20 years ago and commuted by bicycle in the Phoenix/Tempe area. He had a lot of close calls (not due to his eyesight, which was still plenty good enough to ride a bike) and everyone was terribly concerned someone would run him over. I don’t think he cycles any more - buses or taxis, which are either tremendously inconvenient or really expensive.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
>>> Im over 50 yrs and not in perfect health
>>> However, I would just love to see some of you folks
>>> who are complaining about these vehicles get thru 2
>>> feet of snow on a bicycle.
A few years back here in Southern California the local government had a “alternative commuting” shindig (probably at taxpayer’s expense) and the star of the show was “SuperCommuter”. It was some super in-shape guy in his early 20s wearing some sort of olympic speed skating outfit and roller blades.
Yeah, the 40-60 year old scientists and engineers at my workplace are going to go that route
>>> In a city like L.A., it is quite impossible to ride a bike to
>>> work. Not difficult; impossible.
And to be perfectly blunt, between my home and my work, there are some areas that would be very dangerous (as in crime) to bike through. And as others have mentioned, there’s just too many loose nuts behind wheels out there on the roads.
I actually have a very nice Trek bicycle that I ride for exercise. I put it into the Caliber and *drive* it to a local park, and ride there, away from cars and with the ducks and squirrels.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Sell your car and live in a grass hut.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I’m frankly appalled to see milages of 20 MPG. That’s 8.4 km/l..!!!!
You would get taxed out of your skin in emission-taxes for such a car in Denmark. And with good reason too!
You should be really ashamed of yourselves!
June 20th, 2007 at 4:05 am
I’m frankly appalled to see milages of 20 MPG.
Especially when you consider that that’s right in the same ballpark as the original Model T Ford….
June 20th, 2007 at 6:24 am
Americans and their complaining about petrol prices…
I wish we paid that little for petrol, but even 5 years ago it cost more than that
June 20th, 2007 at 7:23 am
note: one guy said he needs the big heavy frame and big heavy engine in order to protect himself from accidents… this is simply wrong, it doesn’t work that way. I don’t know how a big engine is supposed to keep you from having accidents in the first place, but an SUV is actually more dangerous in case of an accident than e.g. a minivan (some Brit motoring show once tried crashing a Landrover into a Renaul Espace. Passengers in the Espace won!)
June 20th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Personally, I think the government should stay out of the pricing of gasoline and let the market decide. If one or two places decide to “gouge”, they won’t get customers. If the price rises across the board, it’ll hurt, and people should learn to drive less.
The profit margin made by the oil companies, if what I read was correct, is (substantially) less than the amount made by several other industries, including pharmaceutical companies.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:49 am
Yes, we in Australia do pay more for our petrol (gas to you), but I admit it is still a lot less than most of the world is paying. Nobody seems to have quoted anything from the tables in the link by *dunc* at 04:13am:-
That table is an eye-opener, and though it is not comprehensive, it does give the equivalent cost per gallon in $US, ranging from 0.19c in Venzuela to $7.69 in Norway! Now that is an obscenely large range in anybody’s books.
WE recently drove to Adelaide from Sydney, and starting with a tankfull, costing around A$1.30 liter,(about US$5.20 per gal.), needed to refill - 50 liters - halfway across (700km of the total distance of just over 1400km), and, so as not to runout within spitting distance of our daughter’s home, and on a freeway, went for a splash and dash, at what we (rightly) assumed was the last servo before the end of the freeway. A bit over two tankfulls.
It was a near new Nissan Tiida, 1.8 liter motor, auto everything, and it went faultlessly. I consider it to be a “big” small car. And the wife chose it all on her own! For herself. It is the latest version of the Pulsar, and as usual, comes with various extra appointments as you go up the range.
The return trip, covering a different route from halfway, ended up using not much more fuel at all, maybe two and a quarter fills. The maximum cost per liter was the splash before the refill on the return trip, (our favored brand not being available in the small town), was $1.50liter, about $6.00 US/gallon.
It was a just run-in car, two on board and not a great deal of luggage, an efficient new design engine, (I suspect to be made to Renault specs, as they have a controlling interest in Nissan Motors now), though I personally would have preferred a larger engine, this one seemed to fill the bill anyway, and I was pleasantly surprised. We both drove at, or under the legal speeds (most of the time!) - the max on Australian roads is 110km/hr - about 70mph.
Ivan
July 26th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
It will only get worse untill our government and industry both figure out how to make money out of emerging technologies. Did you know that Edisons original idea for servicing homes with electricity was to install a crude form on electrolizer (iron plates in acid) and then service that unit on site for you? He was over ruled by his business partners because the knew that they could make more money be installing a meter on your house and charging you by the unit. Visit my site to learn how save gas and what you can do about high gas prices.
November 12th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
A point of history from a fugitive from the early 60’s…I lived in SE Texas where a lot of gas was produced. Texaco and Mobil would have “gas wars”. Gas was sometimes 15 cents a gallon and you got a set of 6 drink glasses with a fill up and a kid would fill the car and clean your windshield.
I had a ‘63 Austin-Healey Sprite roadster ($1800 new) with an 1100cc motor that would get 40+ miles/gallon if driven carefully (which I didn’t). My gas expenses would be $3 a month and I could put it on my Texaco credit card.
I was teaching junior high math and making $4800 dollars a year. My rent was $65/month. My beautiful 500cc Triumph bike cost $1200 and my Rolex Submariner (which I still have) cost $185 new.
JFK was murdered during my first semester as a teacher.