Gas prices....

[daleduke17]

(if you didn't know edible_hat WA petrol stations are only allowed to change their prices once a day at 6am, and have to publish them the previous afternoon)

That would be a great idea for the United States to do, but, it would cause severe chaos every afternoon when the prices come out as everyone would head to the stations on their way home. :-/

But, I'm all for it.

[Jbball]

My wife and I drive a 94 Sable and 98 Sebring (no car payments) and gas is still kicking our ass. I too, am tired of this. I'm sure it's just the war that's pushing the prices and money hung refiners/producers.

[Boochan]

We were ridiculously busy today. Some idiot who has no idea what he's talking about went on the radio and said the oil companies are planning to put the price up at midnight tonight and keep it high until after Easter. So all the sheeple came out to fill up.

My prediction based on past observances - the price will drop another 2-3 cents in th next couple of days then go up around 15-20 cents on Wednesday afternoon (then slowly drop 14-19 cents over the following week)

For some reason here over west in Perth our cycles are vastly different.. though because of how the media is we get a lot of eastern states centric press coming through ACA/TT, even though our local fuel climate (if you didn't know edible_hat WA petrol stations are only allowed to change their prices once a day at 6am, and have to publish them the previous afternoon) is vastly different, and price spikes across the board never ever seem to happen (normally its just BP or Caltex, another brand or two might follow suit, but thats it) even during holiday periods every suburb will generally have a station with reasonably cheap fuel in comparison to the others in the area. People still panic though mind you.

[edible_hat]

We were ridiculously busy today. Some idiot who has no idea what he's talking about went on the radio and said the oil companies are planning to put the price up at midnight tonight and keep it high until after Easter. So all the sheeple came out to fill up.

My prediction based on past observances - the price will drop another 2-3 cents in th next couple of days then go up around 15-20 cents on Wednesday afternoon (then slowly drop 14-19 cents over the following week)

[Andara Bledin]

it's 1.09/sq mi in alaska

I get customers occaisionally who will come in and spend a couple grand, then mention they have a 140 mile drive by truck, then another 40 by snowmobile, just to get home. the only public transportation we have is city buses in a few cities(it might just be Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks)

I like snowmobiling, but I'm glad I do it purely for recreation

One of the people in my WoW guild lives on the side of a mountain in Colorado. The nearest anything is about 40 miles away, and that place has a population of 50.

He owns his own business as a welder, but he still has problems getting to his shop when the weather's bad. He has a problem with finding people to work for him because they don't want to travel partway up the mountain to his shop.

^-.-^

[TNT]

Now that I can afford to buy a car, I'm too cheap to pay high gas prices.

But what does it matter? I live three blocks from work. Within those three blocks, there's two convenience stores, a hair cutting place, a pizzeria and other restaurants, and a farmers market. A few blocks more and there's a drugstore and full scale grocery store. Even our minor league baseball stadium isn't a far walk.

And there's a bus stop practically at my front door.

Those are the reasons I don't move, as much as I'd like to. I don't have to rely on anybody for rides.

[crazylegs]

(more tax than actual fuel cost now).

Has been for a while, we pay around 30p/litre for the actual petrol then we pay excise duty and VAT on top of that!

[AKWalMartCartGuy]

Well cannot comment about other european countries but as tsar said thats not true in Finland, mass transit "works" only in few largest cities.
If you live in major city and work in centre using bus will atleast double traveltime, if you work somewhere else then triple or so. Due to financial problems i had to sell my car and time to travel tripled, i live in one of largest cities
And if you live in smaller city then mass transit is basically for scooltransit only.
My childhood home is in much smaller city and you can go in city centre in 8/9am and return 2/3pm (if you want walk 2 miles then you can return in 5pm too).
So in finland car is necessary to most of population.
Wikipedia tells that population density in finland is 40/sq mi and in USA its 80/sq mi

it's 1.09/sq mi in alaska

I get customers occaisionally who will come in and spend a couple grand, then mention they have a 140 mile drive by truck, then another 40 by snowmobile, just to get home. the only public transportation we have is city buses in a few cities(it might just be Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks)

I like snowmobiling, but I'm glad I do it purely for recreation

[Andara Bledin]

Wikipedia tells that population density in finland is 40/sq mi and in USA its 80/sq mi

Actually, that figure for the US is extremely misleading. It's an average over the entire country. Our major cities are much denser.

I have one friend online whose closest town has a population density of 14/sq mi, and another nearby "city" has .28/sq mi

The city I live in, however, has a population density of over 9000/sq mi.

^-.-^

[onkko]

If I am not mistaken (please correct me), but mass transit is much more developed in Europe. Few areas don't have access.

I live in the Metro DC area the "capital of the free world" and I am forced to drive, because there isn't a metro station near me.

Americans are more dependent on their cars, because our infrastructure isn't anywhere near as compact as Europe's.

Well cannot comment about other european countries but as tsar said thats not true in Finland, mass transit "works" only in few largest cities.
If you live in major city and work in centre using bus will atleast double traveltime, if you work somewhere else then triple or so. Due to financial problems i had to sell my car and time to travel tripled, i live in one of largest cities
And if you live in smaller city then mass transit is basically for scooltransit only.
My childhood home is in much smaller city and you can go in city centre in 8/9am and return 2/3pm (if you want walk 2 miles then you can return in 5pm too).
So in finland car is necessary to most of population.
Wikipedia tells that population density in finland is 40/sq mi and in USA its 80/sq mi

[Ironclad Alibi]

If I am not mistaken (please correct me), but mass transit is much more developed in Europe. Few areas don't have access.

I live in the Metro DC area the "capital of the free world" and I am forced to drive, because there isn't a metro station near me.

Americans are more dependent on their cars, because our infrastructure isn't anywhere near as compact as Europe's.

Living near a metro station is only half the problem. (I live one mile from a metro station.) The other half is, does the metro go where you want to go? And if it does, how long does it take to get there? It used to take 20 minutes to drive to work. Using the metro took between 45 minutes and an hour.

And thanks to everyone in this thread for reminding me I forgot to get gas on the way home tonight. Guess I'll do it tomorrow. Hopefully the price will have dropped a little. (Yeah, when )

[edible_hat]

all the petrol stations had to get new signs so that they could display prices higher than 99.9p per litre

Happened here about three years ago. At my workplace instead of getting new signs, they (I wasn't working there at the time) got some numbers greater than 9 made up. The boss thought 10s to 14s would do for at least ten years, but we've just ordered 15s and 16s.

[Fiyero]

In the UK it is nearly $9 a gallon now (more tax than actual fuel cost now). We charge in litres and all the petrol stations had to get new signs so that they could display prices higher than 99.9p per litre ($7.68 / gallon), after that the prices jumped quite a bit to around 110.9p

[protege]

Actually, it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Americans enjoy the freedom that personal transportation gives, so public mass transit has a hard time getting a foothold and becoming financially self-sustaining, so people are less inclined to use the mass transit because it's not as convenient...

It's partially that...but also because of the *massive* government subsidies given to our highway system. For years, Pittsburgh had a huge trolley system--you could go to Washington (about 25-30 miles south) and other places via trolley. Pittsburgh also had several commuter trains (on the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie RR, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Pennsylvania RR). Then as cars started becoming more common, our highways and parkways were developed...eventually driving the trolley lines out of business. 30 years on, the remaining trolley service is run by the Port Authority, and only serves a handful of lines in the county, the commuter trains are gone...and everyone's bitching about the traffic on the highways. Now many residents are demanding changes in public transit

[TryNotToBeThatOne]

I've been riding the mass transit here since gas hit $2 (for reasons unrelated to gas prices, oddly enough). In the 1st six months of 2007, ridership went up by almost 4% (that's 13,000 people, give or take). By October it was 6% over October of 2006. I know people who commute over an hour by mass transit, just to avoid gas, etc.