Gas Prices!

[splintered]

$2.89 per gallon here in Jersey. I picked I haven't changed a thing (within the past few months), although I have made postive changes in the past to try to conserve gas. For example, a year ago I sold my SUV and I got a Honda Fit, which is 20 mpg BETTER than my old SUV. Unfortunately I work 40 miles away from my job, and there are no buses or trains that connect my house and my job (I'd have to drive 15 miles to get to a train station, only to have the train drop me off five miles from my job). Well, at least I am not travelling in rush hour traffic, so the gas is being used to transport me rather than sit idle in traffic. The next time I move, it will be so that I am closer to my job.

Also, I carpool with one of my teammates to hockey practices and games. And I try to combine my errands into one trip as much as possible. But all this I've been doing for a while, not just because this is the latest gas price surge.

[Michaelangelo]

Got annoyed with gas as it went back up this last month... figured I'd complain about gas and found this old topic and seeing it's from May of last year with the same prices that I'm about to complain about now.

On the way out to NYC Comic Con I was lucky enough to find gas for $3.10 once... though other than that it was $3.30 a gal... it was a total shock to me that coming home EVERY gas station I hit on the way home was $3.59!!!!!  And now seeing $3.65...

It's sick... wrong and keeps getting worse.

We need an answer that's not going to cost people too much money... we live in a greedy world when there is an answer coming up... like hybreds they charge $$$$ to get it.  Why?   Because people are looking for that extra buck...

Money has become so important to people it's wrong.. we shouldn't have one thing like that which we need to rely on just to get by.. esp when everything in the world is going up in cost... but our pay remains the same!  But now some people can barely afford to get to work.

And I kept to what I said last year.. I don't drive often, besides for my road trips.  And even on road trips when I get to where I'm going my car is parked till it's time to go else where.  When home I don't like driving at all, and if this surgery works out I'm going to start riding bikes more.

[moronqueen]

*shrugs* Iiiii...take the bus. I've been trying to more than usual, anyway...I'm hoping to get a job either in downtown Minneapolis or work from home or...work part time or NOT AT ALL *eyes the hubby, and fingers her cattle prod*...though while that last option is ideal, it's the least likely of them all.

Really, if more people got over their stupid holier than thou opinion of mass transit and took it, it would improve dramatically because it would need to. Reguardless of how high the gas prices get, transit will not get better if there's no call for it.

...and no, not all drivers have that attitude, but out here a lot of people do, because the different income levels are so sharply cut off from each other. The girls I work with, who've always had rides when they were young or driven as soon as they hit 16, are utterly horrified every time I talk about how I take the bus to and from work.

Really, it's usually not that bad. I've got enough street smarts to stay out of trouble, but not enough political smarts to enjoy working in an office. ;P

Joking aside, if people found ways to practice a little more gas conservation (consequently, money conservation) and concentrate a little less on the RUSHRUSHRUSH, prices wouldn't be quite as high, and the high prices wouldn't affect them as much because they wouldn't need to fill UP so much.

[Kazari]

I have heard by July the gas prices are going to be at 5.00!

[Raphael]

We're currently paying $1.33/litre for gas. There are 3.7843 litres in a gallon, so, the conversion puts our gas price at...

*drumroll please*

  $5.03

Smeggin' lovely...

[Aignatius]

CA, WA and OR tend to have prices roughly 25 to 30 cents a gallon more than the rest of the nation. I got a little over half a tank yesterday to fill up, (I don't tend to keep it much below half a tank as it is) and it cost me $50. Apparently prices uhm, have leveled out momentarily, because production is up. Big whup dee do! 
I love how national news is going on about OMG, over $3.50 a gallon, when it was that price same time around here, last year. Hehe. I think presently a reasonable price for this area is $3.86.

And then my whining stops when Raph mentions the prices there in Canada... eek.
 

[Raphael]

According to one webpage that I found, the national average is about 5 cents/litre less than we're paying here (there are some provinces that are far higher).  The national average was about $1.278/litre or $4.84/gallon.

Still, painful to see...

[klork]

CA, WA and OR tend to have prices roughly 25 to 30 cents a gallon more than the rest of the nation. I got a little over half a tank yesterday to fill up, (I don't tend to keep it much below half a tank as it is) and it cost me $50. Apparently prices uhm, have leveled out momentarily, because production is up. Big whup dee do! 
I love how national news is going on about OMG, over $3.50 a gallon, when it was that price same time around here, last year. Hehe. I think presently a reasonable price for this area is $3.86.

And then my whining stops when Raph mentions the prices there in Canada... eek.
 

Yeah, roughly from highest to lowest it goes CA, WA, and then OR (it used to be OR then WA, but our Gov tacked on massive gas taxes the minute she stepped foot into office for "road improvements" that only King County (Seattle area) will see).

From what my hubby's best friend tells me (He just got a job at Chevron in CA, is moving down there next week), our major problem is a lack of refineries.  Not necessarily drilling or over use, not enough supply--we have enough, we just don't have enough places to refine the product--considering how few refineries there are on the west coast is why our gas prices tend to be at least five, six, up to 10 to 15 cents more a gallon than the rest of the country (and still nothing compared to Canada, Yeowch, Raph!).

And of course now food prices are going up because of biofuel--I give proops for trying to find an alternative, but really, doesn't it seem like a no brainer to NOT burn your food?  Plus it wreaks havoc on a lot of engines (mine included, I tried out a biofuel station----which wasn't much cheaper than regular gas---and my kia had all sorts of problems with it, I had to switch right back). 

The problem we have with public transit in this area is that it just does NOT go where you need it to go.  My dad, while we lived in Vancouver, tried for a week to take public transportation,had to drive to a bus station, from there he had to take one bus across town, transfer to another bus that would take him across the river, transfer there to the max station (light rail in Portland), from there ride down to Beaverton, hop on yet ANOTHER bus to take him from one side of Beaverton to the other, and then walk another half a mile to his work.  Normally, he'd have a 45 minute commute by car, getting up around 5 to get ready and get there by seven and he'd be home by about six.  Doing it with public transit he'd have to get up at three just to get ready and get there in time, and then wouldn't get home until NINE.  Co-workers asked if he'd carpool, since a lot of people live in Vancouver that work there, but the problem is that they live *nowhere* near each other, it'd tack on an extra hour and a half of commuting for them just to carpool.

In contrast, he now works up in the Seattle area with an apartment in Kent and the transit there is *awesome*  They don't use light rail, they use heavy rail, and he can get from Kent to a block away from the Qwest tower in Seattle in less than an hour (where as driving is MUCH much worse!).  It really just depends heavily on the quality and efficiency of the transit in the area to boost demand.  Nobody supports the public transit in vancouver simply because the only good it does is get you to the mall and give free rides to the Clark County Fair during August.  They used to have a transit station by my high school, but it flopped, closed up. 

[Amicitia]

Oh man, I'm so glad I barely drive. I work within walking distance (one of the few perks of an otherwise cruddy job) and there's a convenient bus to my volunteer job. And I have no life, so other than that I don't leave the house.

[Calypso]

Guess Australia isn't the only one getting screwed with petrol prices.  At the moment we're paying $1.30 to around $1.60 per letre.  That may not sound too much, but remember I'm in a different country and our currency systems are different.  In many ways I'm kinda glad I got rid of my old Commodore, which can be about $70 a fortnight - depended on my driving distances.  Now that has been cut down to about $50 give or take.

Unfortunately my work requires me to drive a good distance, so does my sister and we both feel the pinch - so much so that my sister had to burrow from me just to ensure her car is full just so she had enough to get to and from work every week.  We don't have the luxury of public transport, so we live for full dockets we get from the shops after spending $30 dollars or more just so we can get 4cents taken off, if lucky 10 cents.

So I can easily say that Australia feels your pain America.

[Michaelangelo]

I got this forwarded to me in my email... figured I'd pass it along.

THIS IS SO WORTH READING .

This is a true story, so read it carefully.
On April 24, 2008, I stopped at a Kangaroo BP gas station, located at 1325
Main Street , Cartersville , GA. My truck's gas gauge was on 1/4 of a tank.
I use the mid-grade, which was priced at $3.71 per gallon. When my tank is
at this point, it takes somewhere around 14 gallon's to fill it up. When the
pump showed 14 gallons had been pumped I began to slow it down, then to my
surprise it went to 15, then 16. I even looked under my truck to see if it
was being spilled. It was not. Then it showed 17 gallons had been pumped.
It stopped at almost 18 gallons.

This was very strange to me, since my truck has only an 18 gallon tank. I
went on my way a little confused, then on the evening news I heard a report
that 1 out of 4 gas stations had calibrated the ir pumps to show more gas had
been pumped than a person actually got.

Here is how to check a pump to see if you are getting the right amount:

Whichever grade you are using, put EXACTLY 10 GALLONS in your tank, then
look at the dollar amount, if the dollar amount is not EXACTLY 10 times
the price of the fuel you have chosen, then the pumps are rigged. In my
case as I said the mid-grade was $3.71 9/10 per gallon, my dollar amount for
10 gallons should have been $37.19. If I had only check the pump. It
doesn't matter where you pump gas, please check the 10 gallon price. If you
do find a station that is cheating, contact the Georgia Agriculture
Department, and direct your comments to Tommy Irvin, Commissioner. In other
states contact proper authorities.

Please don't delete this until you have sent it to all people in your
address book. We need to put a stop to this outrageous cheating of
customers. The gas companies are making enough profits at honest rates.

What do you guys think? 

I don't see how pumping 10 gallons would work by doing the math, cause the area you look to see where you pumped is the same area that does the math of the price your spending.  Unless you some how know when you get 10 gallons into your tank... I don't know of any tank that says you just pumped 10 gals even into your gas tank.

[klork]

This is why stuff posted on the internet is always suspiciuos to me...it's not always accurate.  I think the only way that you can really judge how much ten gallons is,is if you know where on your meter(scales, etc?) your tank hits ten gallons.  OR, you can take a five gallon tank (those lovely red things) and do it that way.  That way you can *see* the gas getting pumped in and know it only goes to five gallons.

It is a shame that people might take advantage of a rocky market, and it does happen, but I honestly believe that this is more or less an exception and not the norm for about 99% of the gas stations out there.  Especially since a lot of them are franchise owned (like..we have Safeway and Fred Meyer gas out here, they're all equally priced based on region averages, and tend to be up to 3 cents less than average, Chevron is always five to six cents MORE than average, Arco being five to six less than average, while the rest of the stations --Shell, Texaco, etc--tend to run along the average), they're not really given space TO price gouge.  Plus with the watch they have on companies out here it's doubtful they'd be able to get away with it. (we live in a very commuting area where most have to commute via car up to an hour and a half daily in places, and if the stations were gouging, they get SO much business that somebody would notice this--I know I would've!)

My advice would be to take anything on the internet with a grain of salt.  Kind of like myths & wives tales---they generally start with a small grain of truth and blow up into something pretty out there in reality.

[Michaelangelo]

I don't follow or believe anything I see on the internet.

Though I just found this as an interesting type of gouging.. we all look at the price and watch the price as we're pumping our gas.  But what if the computer was set so that what we're seeing on the screen is a lie... and instead of 10 gals of gas we got 8.5 gals of gas.  The gas station just made extra money off of us, in an area that's not as noticed as if it was the price being higher or lower.

That's why I found this interesting, I never thought of them doing that.  But it is easy enough for them to rig up and rip us off.

[Aignatius]

If in doubt, go look it up on Snopes.com

http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/cheating.asp

[Michaelangelo]

Thanks for the post Aig!!!