Oh, wah, wah, wah!

bruce

So, I was reading CNN this morning when I saw that the price of petrol has hit about $4 per gallon, aka $1 per litre, or in British Money, 61p per litre. And people are going apeshit over this.

The petrol station round the corner from me is currently charging £1.35 per litre of unleaded petrol. This works out at £5.40 per gallon, or nearly nine US Dollars.

So, I think, in all of this, it's the Brits who need to be hacked off here!

waitingfortheencore

Yeah in Ireland it's up to €1.50 a liter which is €5.60 a gallon. I know it's only £4.90 in Sterling but yeah suck it up America! We got it worse than you!

bruce

Boy, are you in for shit when the recent fall in the Euro due to the rumours of Greece leaving hit the fuel market!

DustinTheWind

This exactly why I say, "Screw the Caribou, we should be digging our own black gold." This EXACT same scenario (or worse) is coming to the states if we don't. Seriously, America has some of the largest untapped reserves in the world, but the envirofacists won't let us use it. (or build new power plants or refineries, for that matter. What do they think their electric cars run on? Sunshine and rainbow sprinkles?)

Plus we could sell the surplus to the Brits on the cheap. EVERYBODDEH WINS!

bruce

Britain has plenty of oil, thank you.

Behemoth

I've been saying this for years now. I hate when I hear people complain about high gas prices. Maybe you should buy a more efficient car if you hate it so much. You don't need a fucking SUV to commute to an office job. I wish the gas prices were allowed to stay up 6 years ago. The government keeps stepping in and look what happened. We're a decade behind on fuel efficient car technology and we're reaching a point where the gas prices won't be controllable.

Mish42

My cheap ass used car is decently efficient... I get about 20 miles to the gallon in the city, and I get 30 on the highway (Austin drivers rape my gas milage). However, I don't see why that would make me any happier that I'm spending more money for my gas. I appreciate that it could be worse, but at the same time I don't enjoy spending a very significant portion of my part time job's paycheck purely on gas.

X'o'Lore

American petrol is not the same as in Europe. I don't know specifics but I think American stuff would burn a little cleaner but doesn't produce as much power, so our fuel efficiency would inherently be a little worse. The love of large vehicles doesn't really help either. As such, we aren't necessarily a decade behind on efficiency.

Regardless it's still cheap here by comparison. I'm certainly in no position to complain. Still I'd suspect diesel prices are the more important value to consider and that's probably a bit higher than $4 a gallon. All the big trucks we got on the highways shipping stuff hundreds of miles across the country everyday use quite a bit of fuel, and the costs for that filter through nearly all other products. Also a lot people can't go anywhere at all without a car. They may need to burn a whole gallon of gas/petrol just to get to the nearest store to buy milk. Which now costs more due to the higher shipping costs.

This makes people a bit cranky even if it's not the end of the world. It's not unlike what would happen if someone just decided that everyone in America was going to have their pay cut by 10%. Except instead of reducing the cost of labor, we just give all the extra money to some other country full of people who hate us.

But really...have you maybe considered that you are paying too much for petrol?

mario

I'm still entitled to complain for paying more than I used to. It has nothing to do with what other countries pay.

hlavco

The problem is our infrastructure got all crazy spread out in the 50s and now our houses are really far away from our jobs and our stores. (The other problem is cool cars and eco-friendly cars are two entirely different things because people have this weird need to make efficient cars either super-ugly or super-boring or super-expensive)

Serephel

I don't drive at all. I live in a city purposely designed with lanes for bikes, bus stops for a multitude of bus lines, multiple intercity train stations, and a subway station to come next year.

Mish42

Austin is pretty bike friendly; there are bike lanes all around the city, and all the buses have bike racks that are usually filled up at any given time. Greg bought a bike and started taking the bus to save on gas, but I like driving too much. I honestly have nothing against public transportation-- I absolutely loved riding the trains in Dallas, and I'll still use them whenever I know there's a train station around where I'm going. I just... really like driving fast.

hlavco

I have a 40-minute commute to work now, but I don't mind it much. The drive is smooth and quick. But there's a train station practically next door to my job so the overwhelming logic might force me to start taking mass transit.

Toast

Eh, last year my average monthly gas expense was around $80-90. So far this year it's been in the $130-140 range every month, and I'm actually driving less because of it.

Also, on the subject of buying better cars, not everyone has the money for that. My car is having transmission problems so I've been looking to replace it anyway, and finding it difficult to find a used car that isn't exorbitantly expensive. The market for used cars is so starved in the states because of the economy being bad.

Most of the cars that I've taken a look at are around ten years old, usually have more than 170k miles on them, and just as fuel inefficient as my current car, and the asking price is between $3k and $5k. These are the same kinds of cars I could have bought for $1-2k just a few years ago.

mario

I found my car used from a local dealership with pretty low usage (only a year old, 16,000 miles). Ford Focus isn't an amazing car but it's got good gas mileage and little amenities I can appreciate having previously only owned cars as old as I am (air conditioning, wow!).

That said, I would like to work closer to home in the future, but at the moment I'm committed to my 23-mile-away job. The nearest train station is prohibitively far away, requiring a lot of driving on my part and basically defeating the purpose of public transportation. Then again, work helps pay for such commutes, so it might be worth looking into.

bruce

Sometimes, all you need is good old shanks pony to get you from A-B.

My last job took less than five minutes to walk to. Would've taken about fifteen to drive as the foot journey was through some back road cul-de-sacs while the car journey would entail going round a constantly congested outside road.

Mish42

Austinites are so cute- they think that a drive that takes you longer than 10 minutes to get anywhere (besides when you're on the highway-- god forbid you take the highway) then it's SUUUPER far away. I gotta say though, I still like driving way further to get anywhere when I'm in Dallas better than driving a short distance in Austin. The difference is that people haul ass in Dallas so I can happily race them all, and in Austin people drive 15 to 20 miles per hour under the speed limit, at the same speed as the car next to them, blocking the road for anyone who might want to go faster than 25 mph. It raises my blood pressure some mornings.

I also get waaaaay better gas mileage in Dallas. I miss it.

shakeycat

I spend about 3 times on insurance what I do on gas each month. Ugh. Why do I bother?

X'o'Lore

I...might be able to walk to a bus stop if I'm willing to walk 6 or 7 miles. Train? You mean those things that haul freight along those rails? Why would you try and ride one of those? I'd have to walk a couple miles and pray a train goes by any time soon when I get their and hope it's slow enough for me to try and jump on without stupidly killing myself. I'm sure I'd have at least a 20% chance of survival if I was cautious.

Yeah, for many people in my state a 10 minute drive might as well be next door and there is no such thing as public transportation. If you want to go somewhere, anywhere at all, you're going to have to drive and it's going to take at LEAST 10 minutes of driving before you come to anything worth stopping at. Most of the time it'll be 20 to 30 minutes of driving.

Welcome to goddamn farmville. I hope you find corn fields interesting, but at least it's not Iowa.

Serephel

Hey, we're starting to get buses in Iowa, I hear. We also have a small company running a shuttle bus service to O'Hare airport 3 hours away. All things considered, we're not as remote as we used to be.