even at $2.50/gallon gasoline is incredibly cheap

1 gallon of gasoline= roughly 12 man years of manual labor, looking at it that way it shows how much people just dont understand the situation

get used to te higher prices, they wont be coming back down unless some freak event happens, should be $3.50-$4.00 gallon by this time next year and climbing

no way to even estimate that, the military costs $400 billion per year plus extra costs plus interest in the loans needed cause the govt doesnt have the $$ and overspends its income and has been for decades, we are living on borrowed $$ that can never be repaid cause once the reality of peak oil hits it will become abundantly clear that the US can NOT outgrow its debt problems

Would it be possible for you to ride all winter? I did it last year here in Saskatchewan and I plan on continuing it indefinitely. I spent the money and bought the gear (studded tires and clothing) and I always had a back up plan. The days that put my safety at risk I took the bus (below -30C or too much snow on the roads).

I sold my car earlier this year and I am quite content to see gas prices rise ($0.999/litre in Regina). It does affect me in terms of the trickle down effect on transportation etc. but I think as a society we need to come up with more efficient ways to live so we don't rely so heavily on fossil fuels.

No way to estimate it? What are all of those Ivory Tower economists at American Über Universities doing? I though one of them might have taken a shot at this sort of question, no matter how speculative the result.

No way for the average guy like you or me to estimate it. Any estimate from an "expert" would likely be heavily weighted by their political views (Republicans wouldn't include stuff like salaries since we pay the guys in the army anyway, Democrats would include stuff like funeral costs of people we shot in Iraq). Probably the best way to estimate would be get equally biased numbers from both camps and average them .

Dear Eggplant Jeff,

I personally take extreme exception to being called "average" by you. In my own personal experience I have found that I am certainly well below average, if not in the bottom quartile! A little smiley face would have been placed here if I didn’t think it might kill the joke. Sorry to everyone else for getting off the gas price topic but I just could not resist.

Yours truly,
K71021

$2.71 unleaded regular in the San Fernando Valley (northwest of downtown L.A.)

I'm just now starting to get some gas price induced hostility from drivers. Crappy comments at stop lights, that sort of thing. Happens everytime gas prices really spike up. My favorite was the guy in the new large PU truck that yelled something about "grow up and pay for gas like the rest of us" then burned across the intersection at full throttle thereby using a little tire rubber and alot more gas than he needed to.

Perspective: Gasoline per gallon prices are lower now than they were in the early 80's and late 70's, adjusted for inflation. We didn't learn our lesson then, and we continued the fuel binge unabated for most of the last 20 years. It's too late for modest conservation measures to take any noticeable effect( other than our egos) on the prices. We missed that window of opportunity, and are firmly entrenched in a petroleum-based economy with no legitimate way out. Like someone stated before, get used to the prices you are seeing, because they won't go down unless we make Venezuela our 51st state and Saudi Arabia our 52nd. Enjoy the warm weather, America!

saw this in the san fran chronicle

"The state does not yet have gasoline sales data from this summer, which would show whether high prices are keeping Californians off the road during vacation season. But sales figures from the spring, when gas prices hit their last peak, show that consumption dropped 0.55 percent compared with the same period last year."

so maybe there's some hope. (of course the preceding paragraph said that everyone has to drive and there are no alternatives because nobody will ever take public transit, sha, who would want to when they can ride??)

Most of Europe has been well over $4.00/gallon, which is about 0.85 euro / liter with the current exchange rate, for a long time already. The actual price in many places is over 1.2 euro / liter or more. No sign of the auto being dethroned, yet. Besides the gas price, the price of cars themselves is much higher in some European countries, because of high taxes / fewer subsidies and very expensive insurance. People still drive. Let's check again at $10/gallon.

Mikko

I started this thread to show the humorous side of rising gas prices and to offer kudos to bike commuters, who are saving the planet while saving a few $$ each week.

Let's not get too political or one of the other mods may move the thread to Politics & Religion.

I paid $2.40/gallon the other day here in Houston. Luckily I have a fuel efficient car, and it's only 9 miles to work. We're about to move into a new house 3 miles from work, and I'll DEFINITELY be riding in then.

I printed out that cartoon and will post it in my office. Thanks.

$2.75/gal for Unocal 76 here in Chatsworth, Ca; north-west of downtown Los Angeles.

It hit $2.32 at the station I use here in Arkansas day before yesterday. Thats for the 87 octane stuff. I don't even look at the premium pump anymore.

You guys can jump up and down all you want about how people continue to drive, but in reality, what choice do they have? The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of working class people couldn't ride to work even if they wanted to. Setting aside the poor physical condition of most of America, not everyone can or is willing to live in an apartment 4 or 5 miles from where they work. I've spent too many years paying for the house and land to give it up just to save a few gallons of gas. In my own case, it's a 28 mile round trip over mostly interstate type road. And no, before you ask, there's simply no other way to get there. It's not restricted access, so I could ride if I was up to it, but after 14 miles of very hilly terrain, I'd need a shower and a place to change at the very least. How many employers are willing to provide these facilities for a factory or office that has hundreds of people in it? I don't know about you, but I have no desire to be in a room with 50 sweaty people for 8-10 hours. The weather is another factor. Summers here are quite often over 100 degrees, and it can be below zero in the winter. The heat poses no problem for me, but I absolutely hate being cold. By the same token, we don't get much snow here, winter time precip is usually ICE, and I ain't ridin 14 miles on a surface I can't even stand up on.

What we need are alternative fuels, not excuses why they won't work. Ideas, instead of pissing and moaning about how many cars are on the road.

Where's that good old American ingenuity? Let's find a way around this problem.

I paid $2.79 for premium yesterday! Besides the fact that I just don't need a car for my short commute to work (we have an SUV for the fam), a hefty monthly payment, and ridiculous gas prices I'm selling my car.

IMHO we're being robbed and I'm sick of it.

Yeah, I'd have to upgrade to studded tires and fenders and all that stuff... I may as well get a new bike! But really, it's not so much the bike as it is my own body; I've ridden in temps down to about 4 or 5 C, and even then I can feel the cold in my lungs. It's like a short attack of athsma or something, because I certainly can't breate as deeply as I can during the summer. Does this go away too after a while, or would I have to wear a face mask as well?

BTW, my commute is just a short 4 km, all on paved and oft-plowed roads. Heh, come to think of it, it would probably take me longer to take on an off all those warm clothes, than it would to actually ride there! I also don't know if my bike could be stored indoors.

I'm sorry, but that's just a poor, lame, consumeristic excuse. If you live in a large city with public transit, it's ALWAYS an option to get rid of your car. I live in LA, the car capitol of the world, and I get along just fine without a car. Even if you live out in the suburbs, chances are, public transit serves your area.

I respectfully disagree. People did just fine for thousands of years without internal combustion and without "alternative fuels." We don't need alternative fuels, we are just addicted to gasoline.

If there are no cars on the interstates, they will be great for bicycling.

It is true that as a nation we're addicted to cheap gas and we've really painted ourselves into a corner. Like any addict, kicking the habit will be a drawn out and painful process. There are many parts of the nation that are sprawling and not well-served by transit, even when measured with the contemporary standard for "good" transit.

Still, fuel is only one part of the problem. The fact is that fuel, congestion, and highway, and extending the grid are all becoming to expensive to support. A motoring public was built on the back of post-war economic dominance. That dominance has faded and we don't have the vast pool of public funding that we once had.

Alternative fuel technology doesn't make it less expensive to extend sewage, electricity, phone, etc service to sprawling exurbs. There are potential solutions for all of these: wireless communication, wastewater recycling, computer controlled private transportation to increase the capacity of the existing road network, on-site power generation, etc. But that's a lot of stuff to get figured out and commercialized in the near future. Will it happen? What will be the cost of suburban and exurban living when it finally does?

What about the continued decay of "public"? What about the impending water crisis? What about the environmental damage of our extravagant and spread out lifestyle?

What a great thread. Thirteen years ago I did without a car (did not own one) and rode everywhere for almost a year. Commute to work (in Branson, MO, a town of about 4,000) was only four miles but in January it got a might nippy. Gas prices right now in southern Missouri are around $2.19/gal, the highest ever. So, I'm buying a new bike and making my statement. I'll be riding to work again, this time in Springfield, MO (population 200,000) and the commute is about six miles. However, to make that commute safe, I'm having to find alternate routes which will make it about nine miles.

Like many of you, I'm still ticked about the fake energy crisis in the 1970s and that we chose not to explore alternate fuels at the time.

I personally live quite close to work (<7 miles) but many in this forum bike as far or further than you are from work. They manage. I don't have a shower or even a locker at work but I manage just fine using the bathroom to clean up. Now, if 50-100 people at my place of work started bike commuting, there would be an issue when we all arrived to find a place to change. But I would hope that if that many people were bike commuting that the company would use the huge amount of space it has devoted to parking for cars to build a washroom for all of us. As to the weather, if you can deal with the summer heat, why bring it up as an excuse? In the winter, if the roads are too icy to walk on, you probably shouldn't be driving. Arkansas is further south than Delaware so you can't possibly get much worse winter weather than we do. There were 3 days this past winter that I thought were unsuitable for biking (I didn't commute at the time but rode for fitness). If I didn't have a car and really couldn't ride, I'd just call in sick or take a vacation day. To form an opinion that it's impossible for the majority of the US population to commute based on a few bad winter days is a weak argument.

That'd be $4.90/ Canadian Gallon (4.546 litres)... $4.10/ US Gallon (3.785 litres). Our gallons are bigger than theirs, so we get better mileage!

You guys and your crazy Imperial system. When are you finally gonna switch to metric??

When facts appear slanted to some, they can always be labeled 'political' and shunted off somewhere else...mods, do your worst. Bikes are part of the answer, but kicking the oil habit is the elephant in the broom-closet. We can always annex Mexico(again). Wal-Mart and its foreign subsidiaries already employ 12-15% of their workforce. See, we've already got our foot in the door!

sigh. too many other posters (pedex, skijoring, more?) already beat me to it.


Gas is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. My cheapest bicycle cost me over 50 gallons of gas (2004 prices). Our tandem cost us 550 gallons of gas (also 2004 prices).

We're going to look at a little pickup truck tonight that will cost less than 500 gallons of gas, plus burn less than my diesel pickup (which cost me nearly 5000 gallons, though is only worth about 2000 gallons now (current prices)).