What an economy Bush will hand over the next president. We may hit $4/gallon by the end of this year.
This is what people are paying around my way…
North Carolina Unleaded Average
| Regular | Mid | Premium | Diesel |
| Current Avg. | $3.189 | $3.384 | $3.533 | $3.630 |
| Yesterday Avg. | $3.176 | $3.371 | $3.519 | $3.609 |
| Month Ago Avg. | $2.979 | $3.161 | $3.300 | $3.344 |
| Year Ago Avg. | $2.462 | $2.612 | $2.727 | $2.63 |
How about a trip down memory lane, back to 1988?
Just to rub in the pain a little more…here's a shot from one of my favorite action films Die Hard, set in L.A.
This is a scene (46:12 into the film) where the camera pans up to the fictional "Nakatomi Plaza" where Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) is holding people hostage, a gas station/convenience store in the foreground (where policeman Al Powell has stopped for a Twinkie run). 77 cent unleaded, argh.
So what are you paying at the pump? Do you belong to a discount club like Costco, to save a few pennies per gallon? Does your area have decent mass transit? Here is AAA's fuel report.
103 Responses to “Q of the day - pay at the pump”
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Between this…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12400801/
…and OPEC rightfully blaming the Bush administration’s economic mismanagement today, I’d say we’d be lucky to hit only $4 a gallon by June. This is gonna send all goods and services right through the roof. Goodness knows where gas will be by next year.
Milk is $4.99 a gallon and gasoline $3.19 a gallon in the Augusta ME area. We locked in $2.76 a gallon for heating oil last fall; it’s somewhere over $3.22 now.
I love not having a car. Lalalalalala!
During Gulf War in 1990, I remember we paid $1.25 in Austin; my family in Maine paid over $1.75- if I remember right, “Die Hard” came out around 1988, so the jump from 77 cents a gallon to those prices was shocking at the time, just 2 years later.
$3.25 on Long Island, NY. When it’s continually warm out I’ll be riding a bike and using the train to make my 20 minute commute (though I do drive a rather fuel-efficient Scion xA).
So what are you paying at the pump?
Filled up on Monday - $3.39/gallon - in SoCal
Do you belong to a discount club like Costco, to save a few pennies per gallon?
Yes, but it doesn’t save enough to justify waiting in line 20-minutes to get to the pumps…
Does your area have decent mass transit?
No. Hey, it’s SoCal…
The best I can hope for is California Emissions-compliant small diesel sedans (like they have all over Europe), at a reasonable price, or something similar…
Looks like we’re about $3.70 a gallon right now in So Cal. Could be worse — San Francisco is averaging $3.88.
We have sucky public transportation, but I live about 3 miles from work, so my commute is very short. It takes me 10 minutes to drive but it would take at least a half-hour by bus and I’d rather sleep the extra 20 minutes.
“…so the jump from 77 cents a gallon to those prices was shocking at the time, just 2 years later.”
This time last year, it was ~$2/gallon, now ~$3.40 and rising…
Just realized I was quoting the price for mid-range gas, not regular. That makes it $3.47 in LA and $3.65 in SF.
One of the LA Times blogs has a scary picture, presumably from up north.
$3.19 in northern Indiana. We have a local grocery chain that gives cents off per gallon for buying store brands.
I would totally love not having a car, but I live in The Land That Public Transportation Forgot, so I only mostly love not having a car. Almost a year ago we became a one-car household and I became a walker-and-biker. Spouse has a 45-minute commute so we’re still spending a couple hundred bucks a month on gas. I grew up just knowing I’d go back to the farm at some point, but no dice now. Give me density and walkable neighborhoods!
louise,
Good ol’ Maine, I live in the other Augusta now (Georgia) but I’m sure I’ll be having to send a few checks up north later this year to cover the cost of heating oil, it’s going to make things tough. My wife and I bike to work now, 9 miles each way and we’re lucky enough to have a route that is pretty safe. Some of my friends are ride sharing a lot more now.
Does anyone remember, I think I heard about it a few years ago, groups of people buying large lots of gasoline at a fixed rate in the same way people up north buy heating oil? You could lock in a price if you bought a few thousand gallons at once if I remember correctly.
Looks like $3.55 down the street from me, in Seattle, WA.
Cleveland won some sort of national award for its mass transit, but my experiences with it really sucked.
It’s the evil triumvirate of GWB,Hugo Chavez and BP combining to fix gas prices in the US
Well, as you are busy blaming George Bush, allow me to point out this one:
If the Democrats get this passed, what will the oil companies do? Why they’ll pass it right down to you, in increased fuel prices.
$3.75 or so here in San Diego, but I have to buy premium. I think regular is (a little) less.
Hehe … that was the gas station I always used back when I was in high school in L.A. — an Arco, if I recall correctly. I always got a kick out of seeing it in Die Hard.
And a couple of years after the movie came out, prices were indeed up over a dollar a gallon. Just in time for Bush the Elder’s recession. Funny what happens when this family is occupying the White House.
I’m really glad I no longer live in a place where I’m required to own a car. But we public transit users shouldn’t get too smug — all Americans are about to get a rude lesson in how fuel prices affect the price of everything.
Even at $4 a gallon, you’re still paying far, far less than many other (often much poorer) countries do. In Britain we already pay about double your projected $4 a US gallon. Welcome to the world where you have to actually limit your fuel consumption and plan and design around the fact that fuel isn’t a cheap and limitless resource. Many of us have been living it in for years.
Sorry kids, this in one thing me and my Euro friends tend to roll our eyes about - Americans complaining about fuel prices while still paying far, far less than we do.
Here in the Houston area, I paid $3.05 last week and I am pretty sure that it has gone up since them.
I am really glad that I traded in my gas guzzling sports car two years ago for a nice Prius. I hate to sound like one of those smug Prius owners, but whew am I glad. My previous car was not only a gas guzzler, but took only premium, upping the pain even more.
Where I live (Toronto), gas now costs $4.40/gallon, and going up.
Gas prices go up in response to demand vs supply. If you want to keep gas affordable for important things (like milk and food), you will simply have to use less of it for things like trips to the convenience store. The less gas you use, the less it will cost. The less gas costs, the less the things you have to buy (think food here) will cost as well.
I didn’t have a driver’s license until I was 26. Until I moved to the Coachella Valley in California, I lived without. That meant finding housing within walking distance from work (or on the transit line), using transit for weekend shopping trips, and one-way cab rides back from weekly grocery shopping.
Coachella Valley was the only place I couldn’t swing this. The sacrifices necessary to make due without a car were much worse than any other place I’ve ever lived. The combination of distance, heat, poor public transit, and cheap insurance prices made a car a near necessity.
These days I rent a car once a month to get out of town, run errands, do shopping, etc. With gas prices at $1.11/litre right now in NB, we’re living the “nightmare”.
I think I paid $3.18 here in the Philly suburbs. We have a heavily used (and desperately in need of an infrastructure overhauled) transit system here into Center City. Pretty much everybody I know who commutes from the ‘burbs uses it.
As companies are fleeing the Center City and the suburbs expand, though, congestion on our highways has been getting a lot worse. Both on the regular and reverse commute.
H, the difference (at least in most of Europe) is that you all have reasonable alternatives. It’s nuts to try and drive in London when the tube goes everywhere, but in most US cities you can’t get anywhere you need to go using public transit in any reasonable length of time. Even in Boston, which has a comparatively awesome public transit system, it takes me twice as long to take public transit to work as it would to drive, and I take two buses and the subway–and I live close to several bus lines and two subway stops. Same thing for traveling–forget visiting Grandma on the train; it’ll cost you more than driving would, even if the gas prices approached UK levels.
$3.06 in Kansas City — and little, crappy bits of mass transit that don’t really operate on the Kansas side of State Line Road — just on the Missouri side, and not far out of the city core with any regularity.
This is a car city. Whether parking is free or paid is a big employment downcheck or perk.
Tell me about it. This is from Sunday’s LA Times.
(Yes, it will ask you to sign in, but you can go to http://www.bugmenot.com and enter the website address and they’ll give you a dummy sign-in.)
Filled up today in Sacramento: $3.44/gallon for regular at Arco, which is almost always the cheapest. The Chevron by my house was at $3.69 for regular.
And H, as catabridgian poet pointed out, mass transit simply isn’t an option for many of us. I can’t afford to live in the town where I work–it’s a college town, so all the rents are jacked up on the assumption that four or five students will be sharing a place–so I live in Sacramento, 20 miles each way from work. Public transit is decent in Sac by California standards, but it doesn’t reach much past the city limits. I can’t even carpool, because I work second shift. For me, no car = no job.
I’ve been paying right around $3.00/gal for most of the last year or so, depending on which gas station I go to. My problem is that I have a gas-guzzling SUV, so I spend around $120-130 a month on gas alone.
I’ve been looking at the Prius for a while now, but I can’t afford a new car yet. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get serious about it sometime this summer.
I do like my co-worker’s explanation for why Bush seemed so surprised recently when he was asked what he’d say to Americans looking at $4/gallon gas: he was trying to hide an inappropriate erertion at the thought of all the money he and his oil industry pals were going to be raking in.
The higher the better. Something’s got to get Americans out of their cars.
Luke-
I think most of us agree with you in theory, but what are Americans supposed to do without their cars? Move to city tenements? Buy Segways? Skateboard? How do you carry groceries on a skateboard five miles down a street with no sidewalks?
$3.119 in southeastern Pennsylvania.
I’m NOT paying at the pump… I sold my car almost a year ago. It’s been just buses, bike, and feet since then. I haven’t felt this healthy since I was about 17 years old (I’m 33).
I’m lucky to live:
1) In an area with mild weather (the Bay Area).
2) In an area with a decent public transit system (not to say I haven’t sometimes wanted to bomb AC Transit’s home office).
3) In the same town as I work in.
I know it’s not a feasible option for many people in this country, and I’m definately not sneering at anyone who can’t or won’t give up their car. (Some people get VERY defensive when I say I no longer drive.)
Although I do wish more people would carpool.
$3.049 in Central Iowa. I got nothin’ to complain about in comparison to many of you.
And mass transit? In rural Iowa? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Hell, I don’t even dare to ride a bike between home and work. 1) It’s 10 degrees outside. 2) The only road to connect the twain is a fairly high-traffic 2-lane state highway. 3) I work from 1 in the afternoon to midnight - does that really sound feasible?
Just south of Portland, OR, the cheapest I’ve seen the past week is $3.30 for regular - but more commonly it’s $3.35.
And the talk radio hosts are still griping about the evils of public transportation!
I remember when prices went through the roof during the first Gulf War - all the way to $1.29/gal in SC!
I also remember when prices went back down to $0.74/gal in 1999. $8 would take me 400 miles in my Toyota Corolla.
We full-timed in a motorhome for 4 years between 1996-2000 (reasonably good mileage diesel rig). The highest we paid in the first couple years was $1.75 in the extreme backwoods. Mostly we paid $1.00-1.25, with “high” ($1.33-1.45) prices in California. That would be around 1996-7 for those prices.
Damn those Democrats, trying to provide for the energy needs of future generations. Why are they making the oil companies cry? Goodness knows how much trouble they have making ends meet. It’s not as if energy is, on a quartlerly basis, the most profitable industry in the world. Except, oh wait, it is.
Come on, now. If the people running these companies had some principles, they could absorb these tax increases and leave prices in place. That’s not the way it works, of course. Not that any of this matters. Even at almost $4 a gallon, what we pay for gas doesn’t reflect the real price of our reliance on oil, and expecting energy companies to have any interest in the public welfare is naive. We need changes in personal habits and public policy effecting energy use (that is, reduce it drastically), we need changes in our urban development and we need to adopt energy technologies that we can count on still being around generations down the road. This tax on energy companies doesn’t make me shed any tears. It couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.
what are Americans supposed to do without their cars?
Agitate for better public transit. Unfortunately our populace only demands change when the status quo is hurting their pocketbooks.
I’m kind of surprised no one’s already said this outright (people have hinted at it by pointing out that many people HAVE TO DRIVE in order to get to work): the problem with looking at higher gas prices as a penalty that will get people to consume less… is that this is a hugely regressive penalty. The people who are affected most are the people who are poorest who absolutely need their cars and their gas in order to survive.
We are not “kids” (sorry to pick on you, H), we are adults who happen to live in a country with possibly the most regressive policies and the least advanced public transportation system in the “western” world. Many of us don’t have the resources to move to an expensive city with good public transportation, and most of us don’t like the other option which avoids using cars (living as a hermit in the woods somewhere all self-sufficient).
Yes, people should carpool more. Yes, we should build better public transportation (this is, however, a serious challenge, and is a very different challenge than countries in Europe faced when developing their public transportation). DUH. That doesn’t make it a good thing to punish the poorest people, though. It’s not as if poor people having to spend half their income on one expense (in this case, transportation) gets much policy changed ANYWAY.
And mass transit? In rural Iowa? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! … does that really sound feasible?
Eventually rural living will become infeasible due to high energy costs. The only question is when.
Not my idea…wish I could remember who to attribute it to but…
I hope the price of gas keeps rising until it reflects the $500 billion or so that we’ve spent in the Iraq war…not to mention the cost of a life…what price is that going at these days.
Gas in Toronto is just approaching the $4 mark, it would be about $3.90 for an American gallon. That said I don’t even have a driver’s license yet much less a vehicle. It’s one of those things I’ve been able to perpetually put off due to the public transportation here. I keep meaning to get around to it but when a transit pass costs much less then what most people pay in gas, let alone insurance costs, maintenance and of course the cost of the vehicle itself…Well let’s just say there isn’t much incentive.
Eventually rural living will become infeasible due to high energy costs. The only question is when.
I’d say right around the time we all stop needing to eat and all the farms close up shop.
I really hope this doesn’t post three times, or the comedy value will be gone.
Wait, are you saying that milk doesn’t really come from cardboard boxes? Why doesn’t anyone tell me these things?
Northeast Ohio has been as low as 3.01 in some spots.
I especially like the “people are paying as much as the supply and demand curve says”–is it really THAT skewed from the ’90s? Also “profits help keep oil prices down” and my favorite, “gas prices aren’t any higher than they were 10 years ago after you adjust for inflation” (yes, I’ve heard this, and from a VERY bright person who should know better.)
Also, why are the oil profits not resulting in an explosion of hiring of engineers and operators in refineries (trust me, I know because I am in a related field?) The GPA barriers for entry out of college, experience requirements, etc. are as high as they’ve always been.
Also, why is it that “liberal environmental regulations” never caused gas prices to go up much in the 90s when they were passed?
“Wait, are you saying that milk doesn’t really come from cardboard boxes? Why doesn’t anyone tell me these things?”
I’m movin’ to the country I’m gonna eat a lot of peaches
Movin’ to the country I’m gonna eat a lot of peaches
Peaches come from a can they were put there by a man
in a factory downtown
If i had my little way I’d eat peaches everyday…
“Also, why are the oil profits not resulting in an explosion of hiring of engineers and operators in refineries…”
Strict control of refinery capacity has been one of the important tools the oil cos. use to control prices.
Very similar to the way the electric cos. in California keep a lid on plant construction.
In both cases, they also have the convenient out of blaming the “environmental wackos” if anybody questions their planning…
$3.10-ish in my neck of rural Arizona. The last place I lived (very very rural CA) is already touching $4. I would rather live in an area with transit options and enough population density to make it feasible to walk or bike around, it is just more convenient than sitting in your car in traffic.
$2.89 in Missouri earlier tonight. I drive only a few miles to work and sometimes even work from home. It’s a bummer that gas is so expensive, but hopefully the high price will act as an incentive for people to drive less often.
I don’t think gas prices are going anywhere but up, no matter who is elected. Shrinking supply and increasing global demand will still be the reality whether it’s Obama or McCain.
I live in DC and have no car. It is completely fabulous. I only spend about $60 a month on transportation, and my company pays for it. It’s one of the reasons why I moved here.
That said, I am from Texas and understand the other side and how it is to live in a place where you must have a car. Back in 2003, I left the states for 3 years. When I left, gas was about $1.25 a gallon. We used to drive down to Mexico for like twenty bucks.
Is it beside the point to mention that these prices are still very low compared with Europe/Asia? I mean, I understand that this hits lower income people very hard, and is an economic shock, but we really have had artificially low prices for a long time. I think we mostly need to reduce consumption and the car companies need to sell the cars that get better gas mileage. They exist, just aren’t sold here so much.
Darkrose!!!! I didn’t know you were in Sacramento, too. I’d suggest we meet, but my asthma’s really bad right now.
It’s well and good for people to point out the US has cheaper gas than other places but:
1. isn’t the price difference used to provide services we in the US do not get? Like public transportation?
and 2. In many places, it is very expensive to live in areas that have access to public transportation, PLUS, the outlying areas are made so people cannot get groceries without driving 10 miles.
High prices may lead to solving some of the problems, but it will probably mean a generation of suffering for poor and middle class people while the changes are made. Markets do not respond easily to this sort of thing.
A lot of people don’t realize that the state of Texas alone is larger than the entire country of France. We have a lot of wide-open spaces where public transportation simply isn’t practical.
Not to mention that it’s only fairly recently (I believe it’s within the last 50 years or so) that we have not been a predominantly rural country. So, yes, we do have artificially cheap gas, because there’s pretty much no other way to keep the country going.
(Plus we have our own oil supplies, unlike most of Europe and Asia, so the cost of transporting gas from place to place is much lower.)
I paid £1.07 a litre.
Some hints from a European:
1. Buy a more efficient car. If you don’t want a hybrid, then there are plenty of 1.5-2.2 litre diesels that get 40-50 mpg (US). These aren’t necessarily all that small either - you can get a BMW 320d that gets about 39mpg (US). I drive a SEAT Ibiza 1.9TD and get about 55mpg (Imperial), which is about 43mpg (US)
2. Mixed-mode travel: drive to the station and then take a train, for example. Even if you only reduce your mileage, that’s worthwhile in itself.
3. If you need a big car occasionally, consider buying something small and efficient for everyday use and hiring a big car on the occasions you need it.
4. If you live in a city and can use public transport for everyday living, remember that you can still hire a car or use a taxi when you need it. There are always queues of taxis being filled up with shopping at UK supermarkets.
Probably not much of a consolation to you guys state-side, but just to compare, here in Denmark I have paid between 7.35 and 8.00 US$/gallon recently. And milk is just over 6 US$/gallon. And we produce enough of both gas and milk locally to export the stuff, too.
Somehow, I can manage to fit a week’s worth of groceries on my bike, in Toronto, in winter. I can ride a hundred km a day (30 km and the train back makes a nice leisurely family ride).
And I know that the rising gas prices will hit the poor hardest. All the more reason for those who can to reduce their use of the car to the bare essential minimum. It bears repeating: at some time, if it hasn’t already, the amount of oil we can get out of the ground will hit a hard limit. When demand grows faster than supply, the price will go up sharply. If you want to keep the price down for the poor, for the future, or just for the times when you need a car, then curtail unnecessary driving now. Add public transit, bicycle facilities, walkable communities, and zoning changes to your political activism.
Because it may get better for now. Maybe when Barack Obama gets elected the Saudis will discover a whole new oil field. But sooner or later, we will run short of oil; we can’t keep consuming forever, no matter how much we want to.
Grolby wrote:
But that’s just it: the nicer group of people on whom that tax falls will be the consumers, because the oil companies, just like any other company, will have to pass it on in the prioces they charge.
When you wrote, “If the people running these companies had some principles,” the immediate thought was that they do have principles, the principles of doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. And their jobs are to maximize profit for the companies and return for their shareholders.
Probably not much consolation to those of you who live state-side, but here in Denmark I pay between 7.35 and 8.00 US$/gallon these days - and milk is just over 6US$/gallon. And we produce enough of both gas and milk locally to export the stuff.
I live in Ireland, and yesterday I paid the equivalent of €8 per gallon for gas.
€1.189 per litre x4.5 to get imperial gallons x1.5 to convert to dollars.
Excuse me if I don’t feel heartbroken for you.
(how DOES he manage to type and wave those red/white/blue pom-poms at the same time? Talented toes??)
Like Richard, I pay the equivalent of over $2 a LITRE.
Guys, you have no idea what high prices are. Seriously.
Last year in California, paying $3 a gallon, with everyone complaining, I felt like taking a bath in the stuff. Petrol in America is CHEAP to me.
dinogirl, understood, but we already went through this upthread…
Rural living will still be feasible for actual farmers and those who make their living in those areas. They’ll manage. But strictly as a lifestyle choice, rural living will only be available to the wealthy.
The bigger shake-up will occur in the exurbs and outer suburbs. These are middle-class people who make their livings in urban areas where they can’t afford to live (at least not in the style to which they feel entitled), and they’re going to be hit hard. Those who lose their McMansions in the subprime fiasco and have to start over in the big scary city may end up feeling they dodged a bullet.
Even though I no longer live in NYC, I still follow the habits I learned there: multiple short trips to the grocery store, buying food as I need to re-stock; lots of walking and rollerblading; taking mass transit. There’s a small trade-off in convenience and time on a daily basis, but it’s offset by saving thousands per annum not owning a car, and I’m not spending a quarter of my waking hours in heavy traffic, my hands clenched around the steering wheel.
That’s not to say I don’t keep up my driving license, or that I don’t occassionally borrow or rent a car. But on the whole, I find that leaving the driving to others makes me a healthier, happier and saner person.
Here in Western Mass, it’s about $3.02 for regular. On Long Island, where I visited my parents this weekend, it was $3.33.
$3.19 by my house in Columbia MD - I take the commuter bus into DC and DH takes the hybrid Honda Civic. I’m hoping to con him into riding his bike when the weather gets better.
What’s ExxonMobil’s annual profit projected to be this year? $100 billion or something like that? I still get completely infuriated with them when I hear about how hard they’re working on avoiding their $2.5 billion fine for the Exxon Valdez disaster.
I remember reading an article recently that said that the reason we are paying so much for gas was because of the ’speculators’ who have artificially inflated the price of gas by over one dollar a gallon. They want gas to go up so high that their mere wish for it to go up is enough to cause the price to go up.
We are being had and by more ways than ever before.
Corporations are screwing us just because they can and they don’t even try to hide it from the bloated and diseased ‘government’ of the Bush administration. Where do you think the contributions for McCain are going to come from…
Here is a picture at Crooks and Liars reported to be after a Hummer pulled out of a gas station. What’s next? A Bush tax cut for people that pay for the gas for the Hummer that earlier tax cuts made possible to purchase for peanuts? Count on it…
title=”Filling up the Hummer”>Filling up the Hummer
Agitate for better public transit. Unfortunately our populace only demands change when the status quo is hurting their pocketbooks.
And what, pray tell, do we do during the decade-long (optimistically) “gather funds/fight the eminent domain battles/build the public transport” period.
Hell, here in PA, the western half of the state howls like gibbons when the legislature tries to minimally prop up any form of public transport.
This isn’t going to happen overnight. You can’t just go POOF! — and lo, there is public transportation!
Screwed up that a tag but it works…
Gas was 3.18 yesterday and 3.02 Sunday. I’ve seen gas jump over 30 cents on Sunday night only to slump back down by Wednesday. Who knows…
People need to start picketing gas stations and gas terminals…
What exists of the public transportation in many cities has been crippled by the mantra of tax cuts…
Heck, here in Michigan the Mackinac Center (right wing screeching Gibbons if there ever were any) want to disband the Michigan State Police because it will ’save money’ and there won’t be a ‘tax increase’ needed down the line.
Hell, if our DINO libertarian governor would just raise the taxes on the filthy rich like the DeVos’s (members of the Mackinac Center too) and many others, we wouldn’t have to think about cutting the state police force!
Public transportation in Michigan is a joke and it will continue to be a joke until people get a clue. Which may never happen…
“And what, pray tell, do we do during the decade-long (optimistically) “gather funds/fight the eminent domain battles/build the public transport” period.”
If only Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, Haliburton, Bechtel, and other defense/oil-related/big-construction corps. made public transportation stuff, instead of weapons and military bases.
There’d be so much track, railcars, and buses we wouldn’t be able to walk out the front door without hitting one.
Oh well - dream on, America…
So what are you paying at the pump?
1.4 Euros per litre, which is about 8 USD a galleon.
Fortunately, the city I live in is bicyle-sized.
It’s a blessing that I work from home, because otherwise half my paycheck would go into my car’s gas tank. These last couple of weeks I’ve had to come in to company HQ a couple of days a week to help supervise a new hire. This has made me appreciate even more not paying for gas for a long commute most of the time (as well as not having to roll out of bed at 6 a.m.)
These are middle-class people who make their livings in urban areas where they can’t afford to live (at least not in the style to which they feel entitled), and they’re going to be hit hard.
You may want to take a look at home prices in those urban areas and what you get for your money. A 2-bedroom, 1-bath house in a crappy urban neighborhood with graffiti on the walls will cost you $450,000. An 800-square-foot house in an industrial park next to the freeway will cost you $700,000.
I really can’t blame the people who want to move further out so they can get that same two-bedroom house for $150,000 less.
D’oh! Forgot the blockquote tags. The first graf up there is TG’s.
Nadai: I’d say right around the time we all stop needing to eat and all the farms close up shop.
Different population pattern here, and shorter distances, but:
Most of the farms already have closed up shop, and that is why it’s nigh-impossible to live in a rural area with no car.
50 years ago, around here there were 10 times as many people living on farming as there are today — enough to support village economies, with stores and a school and a doctor, and public tranportation. But with the farms getting abandoned and people moving away, the other rural business follow, there’s no work to be had, until only two farming famlies and a handful of old people are left and public transport gets scrapped because it’s too expensive.
Of course, the immense productivity of large farms is possible only through consumption of equally immense amounts of fuel…
Samantha Vimes: It’s well and good for people to point out the US has cheaper gas than other places but:
1. isn’t the price difference used to provide services we in the US do not get? Like public transportation?
On the 1.40 Euro for a litre of gasoline in Germany, 27 cent are sales tax. Sales tax gets applied to everything, only food and books have a reduced rate. Another (IIRC) 70 cent are energy taxes. Those are used to lower social security contributions, to advance R&D on regenerative energies, and, one assumes, to build and repair roads.
I’d have to look it up, but I seem to remember that energy tax and sales tax are federal taxes, while most public transport is local and paid for by the city or county.
Adjusting for inflation, 77 cents in 1988 was still only about $1.40 today.
dinogirl: Petrol in America is CHEAP to me.
I was also amazed at the low prices for public transport when I was in the Bay area last year. Of course, part of that was the exchange rate… But despite the exchange rate, food was expensive.
$3.49 as of yesterday. No mass transit.
Again, and perpetually, shut up, Dana. You don’t and can’t comprehend, you’ve proven that repeatedly. So find something else to do. Go pull Charlotte Allen’s pigtails or something.
P.S. I don’t have a car, I walk or take trains and buses. I love it! (But with a toddler, this idyll won’t be feasible much longer …)
Don’t forget about how education costs and healthcare costs have also skyrocketed in the last decade. — Basically anything we can’t buy from de facto slave labor in China has been inflating for a long time.
Now commodities and official inflation are just catching up to reality. More specifically, the financial problems require that one of the following two things happen:
1. millions of people lose their homes because they got speculative loans that are really out of their means to service. This would cause the money supply to shrink and the various ’speculative bubbles’ would go away. also there would be major bank failures.
2. interest rates are kept in negative real terms for a while so citigroup and co. can borrow money at 1% from the government and then loan it out to mortgagees at 5%, thus saving the financial system. — but that would ‘bake in’ all the new money and make the huge money supply increases permanent.
The market has bid up commodity prices to the point of taking them parabolic lately because they know which of these two outcomes is going to happen. Also, other countries have cut back on buying our debt and are beginning to service their own economies / demand more commodities for themselves, further fueling the fire. (Or you could just say the dollar is going down in value. Different side of the same coin)
Ron Paul explained all this last year but due to (somewhat legitimate) connections between him and rightwing nutjobs, nobody cared.
Anyway the point is, you have to choose between massive foreclosures and economic dislocation, or $5 per gallon gas. Actually Bernanke had to choose.
Mnemosyne, that is in part why we’re up here in the sticks. A house in Balto suburbs was going to cost us about 100-150k 12 years ago; we ended up with a 3+ bedroom farmhouse with 2 acres for 36k. Beat all to hell and been alot of work to renovate; same would cost about $120-140k now, if similar could even be found.
For 400k, you get a mansion with tons of acres!
I don’t blame them, either. Blame isn’t the issue. This is about a lifestyle that will become unsustainable as fuel prices keep trending upward. Even if they stay, the social ills that go along with trying to maintain a way of life they can’t afford means that graffiti and crime will make their way into their exurban neighbourhoods, as will light industry that violates zoning laws. At that point, the residents won’t be able to blame the “urban environment” (code for ethnic and racial diversity) for the squalor.
It would be nice to see a revival in smaller towns where people both live and work, but that’s not what most suburbs and exurbs are.
You’re ignoring the fact that the exurban exodus was hugely driven by the fact that wages have been depressed since the 1970s. As housing prices went up, salaries did not stay in sync and people kept getting pushed further and further out for housing they could afford. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, and scolding homeowners about how they should have stayed someplace they couldn’t afford a house is blaming the victim.
You’re talking about white flight. I’m talking about something different: the fact that housing prices in urban areas have been pushed up to unrealistic levels by speculators and fraudulent buyers. People who never intended to live in those houses were buying them up, doing some minor refurbishments, and then “flipping” the house for a profit. Get too many people doing that, and you overheat the market and drive out people who would like to buy a house but can’t afford the inflated prices, so they have to move further and further out from the city center.
This has been going on in Los Angeles for almost a decade, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. It’s going to be real ugly out here real soon.
Aw, don’t be dissin’ Dana. For a wingnut, he’s not half bad. At least his manners are impeccable. I drop by his blog every now and then to give him a hard time, and he mostly takes it with good grace.LukeB wrote:
There’s an Associated Press article in newspspers today (from The Philadelphia Inquirer) noting that industry is fighting a tightening of tougher limits on air pollution. If they pass, naturally industry will pass the costs on to consumers.
But what caught my eye was a map that came with the print edition of the Allentown Morning Call that I can’t find on the internet to reference, but it showed that 533 counties were currently in violation of the proposed ozone styandards, with teh worst areas exactly where you’d expect them: most of California, the industrial corridors and the northeast population corridor from northern Virginia up through Portland, Maine.
In the meantime, the rural areas — think of the “red” counties on the 2004 electoral map — are almost all in compliance.
In other words, what Luke wrote is a prescription for unhealthier living!
Mr Ess wrote:
Are you suggesting that there is a shortage of public transportation because the industry to build the PT vehicles doesn’t exist in sufficient supply?
If those were the products of Raytheon, et al, than most of those companies would go bankrupt, because the market to buy such conveyances isn’t large enough to support them all.
Here in small-town Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, the county pays for a public transportation van used mostly by the elderly; it isn’t available for my work or hours, nor would it be for most people who both live and work within the county.
Public transportation in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia and the metropolitan area, SEPTA, is a decent system as far as it goes, with buses and commuter rail lines to the outlying suburban areas, but it remains heavily subsidized; the riders pay nowhere close to the costs of operating the system. Philly has enough clout in the General Assembly to get hundreds of millions of dollars for SEPTA, but poor little Carbon County can’t get the kind of funds for a public transportation system that would take people to and from work reliably.
I love the high fuel prices. I’d vote for Bush if I thought it would up the price to $10 a gallon. (Oh, no I wouldn’t, but you get the idea.)
I do feel for the people who live in rural areas or places with totally crappy public transportation who are just stuck with having to deal with cars, but I have no sympathy for New Yorkers who whine about the gas price. There is no reason to drive regularly in NYC. It’s actually faster to take public transportation or ride a bike (Transportation Alternatives sponsors a race every year and the car is always dead last, by like 1/2 an hour.) For that matter, Manhattan’s not that big: most of the time you can simply walk wherever you’re going. It’s cheaper–$2 will take you anywhere. Plus you don’t have to park if you take the bus/subway. Why do people insist on getting in cars and paying ridiculous amounts in gas to sit in traffic? Quite apart from that little global warming thing.
Louise wrote:
Same reason I’m out in a small town: I paid $87,500 in 2002 for a Victorian twin, 2,200 ft², in move-in condition; we owe less than a year’s net income on it. Had I bought in Conshohocken — where I was working at the time — it would have been $287,500!
There’s a show on TLC called “Flip that House,” about people who buy homes in poor condition, put money into fixing them up, and reselling for a profit. I watched one the other night, where this house, three bedrooms, 2 baths, a basic rancher, with black mold about four feet up all of the interior walls — everything had to be ripped out down to the studs — a yard surrounded by concrete block walls, working class looking neighborhood, and the flippers bought it, in that delapidated condition, for $542,000! They put something like $80,000 into it, and sold it for $729,000!
The prices listed were so outrageous, for a really basic home, that I wondered if they hadn’t been totally fabricated.
I just filled up my gas tank at 3.45 per gallon. Then spent 40 minutes trying to park near my apartment. I live in downtown Seattle, so besides the fact that parking’s a mess, I rarely ever drive. I usually walk everywhere, or the public transportation is good, so there’s that. Last time I filled up my tank, I think is when I picked my mom up at the airport, that was on December 27. So I’m not personally feeling the crunch of high gas prices thank god.
I’m not scolding or blaming, just pointing out that many people are at the stage where they’re fooling themselves about the vicious nature of the system and the self-perpetuating cycle. House-flipping speculation by upper middle class folks was part of that delusion. The truth is it’s already too late for most suburbanites to wise up and downsize. And as you say, it going to be real ugly real soon.
I know several people who watch the L.A. market from different sectors, including real estate, insurance, legal, and government. From what they tell me, it looks like everyone from the banks to the speculators to the city and county governments have been creating this bubble and furiously pumping in air when a leak appeared.
The Bitter Scribe wrote:
Such a touching sentiment that I had to put it on my testimonials list!
“Are you suggesting that there is a shortage of public transportation because the industry to build the PT vehicles doesn’t exist in sufficient supply?”
Not at all. What I’m saying is that if we weren’t throwing money down a rathole by the truckload in Iraq, we would have plenty to spend on our overall deficiency of public transportation. And for those who whine about how this would put all kinds of people out of work who are employed by Big Defense, etc., it was just a little suggestion that those firms could be repurposed.
Bottom line is: America, like any country, has a set of priorities which control the choices we make. Based on a neutral view of our budgeting and other priorities, our highest priority is “defense”, and mass transit is not very important at all.
Given that “defense” spending is one of the least efficient ways to turn taxpayer money into something useful (ideally, anything bought for defense will never be used - so we are paying a lot for stuff that we don’t intend to ever use/get benefit from), it represents in general a huge waste of our potential.
I’m not suggesting that we eliminate the Defense Department. But given that we spend more on defense than all other countries on earth combined, it seems to me that we could re-prioritize and dramatically reduce costs, while still staying secure.
Public transportation is only one of many other priorities we might favor instead…
And no, Dana, we won’t force you to ride on it if you don’t want to…
Well, Mr Ess, eve if we assume that the next President pulls us out of Iraq and Afghanistan within thirty days of his inaugeration, we’d still have a substantial deficit; think we’ll increase it to spend on railcars?
Public transportation outside of densely populated urban areas has always been problematic, and even in those urban areas, the PT systems have to be heavily subsidized by tax dollars; how on God’s earth would you ever make a realistic case for providing public transportation in Montana?
You said it yourself:
Well, Senator Obama’s various domestic spending ideas have been totaled as high as $800 billion by outside groups — though I’d say that no one really knows what the total would be — and there’s just no serious prospect of paying for all of them, even if we completely evacuate our troops from the Middle East, and shut down half of the rest of our military. On top of all of that, Mr Obama is campaigning on a middle class tax cut!
Finally, FINALLY, the St. Charles Streetcar is running again in New Orleans! Hooray hooray happy dance!!! Living 2-1/2 blocks from the streetcar line, that means I get to take public transit a lot more now, and even take it to work.
I do want to get a smaller car, and want my friends to get smaller cars, but there’s an issue here I don’t have an answer for. Ever since katrina, we all feel the need to have one vehicle that is big enough to evacuate our household, which for most of us includes a passel of pets.
It’s still going to be some years before we have a levee system that is as good as we were told had been built for us in the first place, and if another big hurricane comes bearing down in the meantime, there will not be enough availability to rent a large vehicle for that (and for how long? or just one way? to drop off where? who the hell knows??). And I absolutely WILL NOT be one of those selfish people who jams the evacuation route with multiple cars, instead of getting the maximum number of PEOPLE/ANIMALS out in the minimum amount of vehicles.
So we have two cars now, and one is a big one (a grand marquis - big inside & lots o trunk space). We have friends who keep one SUV for potential evacuation. I don’t think we can be a 1-car household, but I would like us to be a 2-small-efficient-car household. Yet I can’t think of a way around the evacuation issue. I’m sure as hell not depending on any kind of competent government emergency services. Suggestions, anyone?
I come from a smallish town (less than 20,000 people). When I was very young people still mostly lived in town. When my parents were teenagers downtown was where you hung out. There was a soda shop and a Ben Franklin’s and some restaurants and such. The grocery store, library, churches and just about anywhere you need to go were all within walking distance of most residents. In my tween years there was a mall built on the outskirts of town and then a Wal-mart and some Toll Brother style subdivisions. Before long downtown completely dried up and you had to drive to get everywhere.
Small “towns” didn’t used to mean a collection of subdivisions and big box stores with parking lots. They used to be more concentrated also.
somegirls, that’s one thing I like about Jim Thorpe; I can — and do — walk from one end of town to the other. Downtown here is mostly tourist trap shops, but I can just walk around and look at the architecture for days on end.
Dana: you have public transportation in spades. You call your public transit routes interstates. Who do you think pays to build and maintain those roads, if not the American public? When and if you run short of oil, you can re-purpose many of those routes by laying rail or light rail tracks on the inner lanes.
Whenever you decide to make the switch, you’ll have a rough ride, but the sooner you do it, the better shape you’ll leave the atmosphere, and the more resources you’ll have to make the switch.
calliopejane: My suggestion may not appeal to you, but I’d say that if you absolutely do not trust your local government to plan an evacuation using public transportation, you might want to relocate from a coastal city. If I really believed getting involved in politics would help, and I didn’t want to find somewhere further from the levees to live, then I’d go in with the neighbours, buy a school bus, and keep it in a secure spot, ready for the nex hurricane to make a beeline for my city.
I don’t think we can be a 1-car household, but I would like us to be a 2-small-efficient-car household. Yet I can’t think of a way around the evacuation issue. I’m sure as hell not depending on any kind of competent government emergency services. Suggestions, anyone?
If you don’t feel safe without an SUV, get a hybrid. It’s not a perfect solution — the gas mileage doesn’t compare with an efficient small car — but at least you won’t feel like you’re pumping carbon over everything in sight every time you drive it.
Louise @1 - the citgo on Civic Center at Townsend is running $3.16 for regular this evening but the Irving past I-95 was still at $3.19 this afternoon…
John Sprague (and a whole bunch of other people) - As I am fond of mentioning when complaints about the price of gas / heating oil / basic foodstuffs, it’s not so much that the price of gas has tripled in ten years, it’s that my hourly wage has barely risen AT ALL. (I’m making $0.25 US more than I did at the end of February 1998. Whee.)
There are lots of money-saving options for people who have resources to begin with - buy a newer, more fuel efficient car, move closer to work, live in a city with good bus/train/streetcar/taxi service, move to a cheaper city, find a job with a shorter commute, etc. Different people are going to optimize their efficiencies in different ways. Not all options are workable for all people in all situations - I get the impression that people from more densely populated countries forget how spread out some parts of the US are and while it might be more fuel-efficient for Americans to live and work in communites that are simultaneously walking-density, safe, and affordable, the plain truth is that most of our communities miss at least one of those qualities and the lower down the income scale you go, the greater the probability that you won’t find any of them.
It’s a bit arrogant to hint that there are quick-and-simple one-size-fits-all solutions to these issues and that Americans should just suck it up because it’s oh so much worse somewhere else.
Buy a new, more efficient car? That’s great if you can afford one, but a new Prius (base prise, 2008, listed at $21000) costs more than my gross annual income so I don’t think I’ll be buying one any time soon. I did buy a used car last year that gets a little bit better mileage than my old one (25/mpg versus about 22) and it’s paid for, so I think I’ll drive it until it dies (like I did the last one.)
Move closer to work? Well, if I had a permanent job, maybe - we live close to my partner’s work since he has a real job and I’m a temp. I try to select for jobs within 12.5 miles of home since that’s a gallon of gas, round trip, per day (at 25 mpg), but sometimes when I get work it’s the next town over and that’s 23 miles each way - or 2 gallons/day, or $6.30/day, or $31.50/week, which is damn close to 10% of my net after tax withholding. I’ve flat out told the agency I won’t go further without getting a higher wage, because I don’t think it’s reasonable to spend more than 10% of my net just on transportation to and from work.
I could keep ranting, but you get the picture.
calliope: Is parking the evacuation vehicle in the garage most of the time and using a small, efficient vehicle (or the streetcar, bicycle, feet, etc) for everyday needs an option?
Thena:
a) my name does not have “u” in it.
b) I don’t know exactly what you want to hear
It may not get better. We may not have any hope of expanding oil production; indeed, the flow of oil may start shrinking, even as the demand continues to go up. I don’t want to see that happen, but it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with what any of us want.
c) I don’t think you have any easy solutions in sight
That said, I still think that collective solutions, such as public transit (if you can build a freeway, you can build a light rail line; if you have freeways, you can probably pull up a lane and build a light rail line) give you more hope than attempts at individual solutions.
d) You may have to agitate and organize for your lives
Lierally. And believe me, it gives me no pleasure to say any of this.
Thanks, Thena… gotta run quick errands into Augusta before storm #20 this weekend. Boy, are the spring floods gonna be spectacular! And a quick explanation for John- here in Maine, there are alot of “Sprague”s, so I would have made the same typo.
It would help if there were a more friendly enviroment for public transit here, but really, there isn’t. Portland, Bangor/Brewer “BAT” and Western Maine Transit are the only 3 public bus systems I can think of; I rode the buses in Baltimore all the time.
Carpooling depends on being able to find someone with a similar or compatible destination/time schedule…
calliopejane, I’d probably solve it like this:
One large car in the garage which gets kept in good condition but moved as little as possible. When it’s not moving it won’t burn gas and could act as store for the evacuation box. Then get a small, efficient car for everyday use, and a scooter to get a single person around town.
Alternative, get a very fuel efficient large car, and a small economic one.
Sorry, Mr SpragGe, mea culpa, I checked that two or three times and still managed to misspell it. (and almost managed to misspell it again, too.)
It occurred to me much later that I might be misparsing non-USian diction for arrogance (which is easy for me to do), and I apologize for that.
I would also like to point out that when a bunch of yanks stand around and kvetch about the price of whatever, we’re not looking for sympathy precisely (or a few notes from the world’s smallest fiddle) - this is in some ways a time-honored American method of getting our collective bile and venom distilled and concatenated until we are, en masse, riled enough to do something about it, whatever “it” is.
So yes, standing around bitching about it serves a useful function, even if it’s boring for everyone else.