Use this item to discuss / complain about the current high price of gasoline.89 responses total.
Last night filled up at $1.88 ($1.889?) per gallon - Clark, Plymouth, Michigan. That is the highest I have ever paid for gas, by 10-15 cents. We'll see if it drops back down significantly after labor day.
I'd complain, except that the price of gas really has very little effect on my life. My commute is short, and my vehicles are pretty fuel efficient. Also, it's still cheap compared to elsewhere in the world, and gas is still a bargain when you get down to it. We subsidize gasoline production in all kinds of ways that aren't reflected in the price.
I drive a diesel econocar. I last filled it up about 400 miles ago at $1.53/gal (pretty high for diesel). It's down below 1/2 full now, so i probably'll have to refuel again in early-to-mid September.
My personal level of concern over high gasoline prices has taken a nosedive since I moved to an island where it's impossible to drive (a car, at least) much more than 35 miles in any direction without running out of road..
Gas prices aren't too high. IMHO, they won't be high enough until the Hummer is no longer a viable product and a lack of a hybrid drivetrain and grid-charging capability is a major negative to consumers.
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I want energy-for-transportation to cost the equivalent of half a cent a gallon. It doesn't necessrily have to be available in the form of petroleum. In fact, I prefer *much* more compact energy sources.
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Re #3: What kind of car? I'm guessing it's a VW, since they're the only company I know of that sells small diesels in the U.S.
I'm thinking I shoulda insisted on diesel when getting my current car. 700 miles of range on the internal tankage?
Re: #9/10 Ja, VW Golf TDI 5-speed. I've never done 700 miles on a tankful, but i do too much city driving to get >50MPG and fuel up amid errands, so i can't vent & fully top off the tank. On-line bragging suggests that moderate-speed summer cruising on blue highways can squeak up to 1000 miles out of a tankful (65+ MPG). My guess is that you could but it'd be far more a stunt than practical driving. Today, my sister told me that regular gas is still $2 at Metro Airport.
I saw gas for $1.76 a gallon in Holly today. I think it's $1.88 here in Tecumseh. I fill up my tank about twice per week, about 13 gallons per fillup. Gas is about 25 cents higher per gallon than it was a month ago, which means I'm spending about $6.50 more per week than I was. That's an inconvenience, not a crisis, and I'm sure in another month the price will drop back to $1.60 per gallon or less.
We paid $1.73 in Sault Ste. Marie yesterday. It is between $1.79 abnd $1.89 in the Houghton area.
In Ketchikan, AK, gas is $1.89 at the gas station and $1.62 or so at the boat docks.
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I use the lowest octane, 1.76 a gallon today.
I found some 91-octane gasohol at $1.80 and filled the Taurus.
Gas in Plymouth seems to be down to $1.71 / gallon. We'll see how much lower it goes now that Labor Day has come and gone...
Re #11: Cool. I'd like to get a different car to replace my Civic, and
a diesel would be great. I think one of my main criteria ("quieter than
the Civic on the highway") rules out anything VW makes, though.
Wow-- it's still about $1.85 here.
I've filled my gas tank literally about 40 times since 9 August. Prices were noticeably lower today, after the holiday weekend. However, I made a point yesterday of keeping a steady pace of about 70mph, and actually got in over 150 miles before needing to switch to the reserve tank.
Down to $1.67 in Plymouth.
Re: #19 I've no idea how quiet a Civic is. However, it's a fair rule of thumb that the diesel car is loudest (compared to a gasser) at the lowest speeds and quietest at high speeds.
With the Civic it's not so much the engine noise that's troublesome, it's the road noise. It's nice enough on asphalt, but we have a lot of concrete freeways with rough surfaces around here.
IHB diesel fuel is about 30 cents cheaper than gas right now.
We just filled up the tank in Findlay, OH at $1.54/gal, there were places at $1.53 but we didn't feel like fighting traffic to get to the other side of the street. Spending all day on your feet at a Ham radio swap will do that to you. We noticed that the first gas station after we passed the Michigan state line was $1.79. It was still $1.54 on the Ohio side.
I realised how bad off we were in I saw gas at $1.76/gal and thought, "What a bargain." I know better.
The derivative seems to be well under the zero mark now, at least.
The Clark station in Plymouth listed Unleaded at $1.59, but then it seems to have gone out of business (it might be getting taken over by Sunoco). Today I paid $1.69 in a Sunoco in Westland that used to be Clark.
Clark closed a large number of stations, or rather sold them to new managers, some of which I have never heard of before.
Jim says he is now spending as much as $1/month on gasoline taking me to the hospital twice a week. I hope eventually to be back on a bike. Normally he only has to buy gasoline once a year (for two trips to Detroit). How does the average American's gasoline bill compare to what is spent on food (some of which is also subsidized, esp. if you eat cows).
Plan on the car for quite a while.
Sindi would freak at my monthly petrol bill....
I probably spent $30-$40 a month on gas
(So far this year, I've spent $804.02 on gas: $493.77 for the Saturn and $310.25 for the van.)
What we find strange is when people build expensive large houses 50 miles from where they work, which are designed to use minimal energy (solar, etc.) and then use more energy getting there than in heating a house in town. A friend of ours interested in zero-energy houses (they generate as much as they use, or more, he has a windmill and solar panels), lives 12 miles from town and drives it every day while his wife commutes to the Detroit area to teach about how to use less energy in architecture. This is temporary (for the past 30 years or so) until they move to an intentional community (where he will still probably have to drive everywhere). They have not bothered to insulate their farm house since it is temporary (they heat it anyway) but the refrigerator runs off the solar panels. People focus on one thing at a time.
I spend about $10 per day on gas.
i have gas right now.
...and I have plenty I'm willing to share.
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Jim is spending $4/week on parking at the hospital when he gives me rides there and stays all day. And $1/month for the gasoline to get there. The wheelchair use is free. What would it have to cost for gasoline before people would take the proposed new train from Ann Arbor to Lansing instead of driving? Let's assume $10 round trip for the train (or was there also a proposed ticket cost?).
Actually, the Lansing transit authority dropped the idea for that train about a year ago. Preliminary estimates of the cost to run it compared to the number of trips people said they were interested in taking it were just too high. And mind you, that's what people _siad_ they were interested in, not what they would actually do. In transit people usually express far more interest in theory than they demonstrate once the service is in place. In this case, people didn't even express interest in the service.
I fill my tank whenever it says it's empty (but it generally has at least 3-4 gallons left), which probably averages once every 3-4 weeks. It's a small tank, though, so it runs me about $10-15.
The population in SE Michigan is just too spread out to make a train like that worth while. Plus commuter trains only work well if there is good public transportation at one's destination. Gas would have to get really expensive, like over $10 a gallon, before I would be willing to take the bus to work if the fares and schedules remain what they are now but, of course, if gas prices were to rise so would the bus fares. On the other hand, if gas prices were to get to $10 a gallon, there would be a lot more people taking the bus so they might have more convenient schedules which would increase the liklihood of me taking the bus. If gas prices were to get to $5 a gallon, I would probably try to carpool. I also would considier replacing my car with a hybrid or I might consider buying a moped or something.
A few years back, my car would be deadlined from September to December (while waiting for me to come up with the scratch to repair it). I found it just as fast to walk from Arborland to downtown as to wait for the convenience of AATA. Since AATA doesn't service Scio Township, I also found it just as fast to walk from Zeeb to downtown. And before that, the trip from Arborland to Plymouth Road Mall went as fast on foot as on the bus. I realised that I can get anywhere in Ann Arbor on foot in two hours, which is about what it takes to meet the bus schedule and ride all over everywhere to get any where. Until public transportation can offer what *I* consider a reasonable schedule, never mind fare, I'll walk or drive myself.
It takes me an hour door-to-door to get from my house to work via the bus which is from Ypsi to Ann Arbor so it isnt too bad as far as AATA goes. However, it is 4 times longer than it takes me to drive. It is too bad this area cant support a rapid transit system. I mean, if there were some way to get from my house to work via public transportation in 1/2 hour rather than 1 hour, I would probably do it now even though it would double my commute time.
If it was my commute, I'd have to figure the time and hassle to get from home to the train station and back at both ends. If it was more than 10 minutes or so to walk, the time for the train would probably equal or exceed the time to drive; so long as time is my most precious asset, that would weigh heavily.
Jim says he can bike to Ypsi faster than the bus. His housemate (6'5") used to do it in 45 minutes door to door. No waiting time. Some time in the next few years there is supposed to be a bike path from A2 to Ypsi that should cut the time considerably as you don't have to wait for as many cars to get out of the way so you can continue. I probably bike only about 2 miles an hour in downtown Ann Arbor and maybe 4 in the near suburbs because of cars.
i can vouch for that. i use to bike from the hosp area to downtown ypsi in about 45 min instead of taking the bus
When I get out of class at 7:00 or 7:30 and the gets me home after 9:00 (with a 35-45 minute wait in all weathers at Arborland), and it only takes me 8-12 minutes to drive it, depending on traffic; I am sure you can guess which route I am taking. We won't even discuss what I have to go through if class or work gets done after 9:00pm.
How often does that particular bus run? I thought they ran every 30 min or 1 hour. The wait sounds awful particularly in cold weather, outdoors.
Starting at 7:00pm the entire bus system goes to once an hour. I have to take the 7 to Arborland and transfer to the 4. During the day the schedule has them arriving at Arborland 15 minutes apart. After 7 it becomes 35 minutes with the 7 usually running on time or a bit early and the 4 running late which often means 45-50 minutes to wait. The last 4 is scheduled for Arborland at 9:30. The last 7 from WCC is at 10 with no connecting bus of any sort. Up until a few months ago you were just dropped at Arborland as the 7 went out of service at that time and you were stranded or had to pay an extra $3 for the night ride taxi. Now you can take the 7 to the bus garage on S Industrial and catch the 6 to downtown. The 4 stops about 3 blocks from my house. The closest the 6 gets is State St, close to a mile and gets there around 11:00. Not a fun walk during the best of weather at that time of night. In bad weather it is horrid. I drive! If STeve has to take the car he damn well better be back in town early enough to pick me up. I shudder when I think that we supposedly have a good mass transit system compared to others.
WCC is not part of the Ann Arbor service area. It's outside, in (I think) Ann Arbor Twp. You get the service that is paid for by the places you are getting on and off the bus. If you were going to school inside the city limits, you would be able to get a cheap ($2) cab ride home if the line buses were not running. I wish there were some magic way to get local funding for transit. However, at current population densities, even within the city, things aren't what you expect from an "urban" area. If height limits on buildings continue, we probably won't ever see that density. So w will be stuck with low-density, low demand service levels.
It is not a $2 cab ride anymore, it was raised to $3. Arborland is inside the city. If I were to take the cab from WCC I would have to pay meter rates. Even during the morning when the 4 runs every 15 minutes it takes me about 45 minutes to make the trip I can drive in about 7. AATA can usually get me where I need to go, close to the time I need to be there (if it is between the hours of 8am-9:30pm), but at the cost of a big chunk of my time and, usually for where I go, more money than I would be spending on gas to drive myself. I use it as a backup plan, not a main means of getting around. My schedule is too full to spend 8-10 times more time to ride than to drive.
Yeah, in general, an urban bus moves at 12 mph over its route. That counts stops, loading and unloading, making connections, etc. You can almost always drive faster than that. Where buses become effective is when the time to park at either end of the trip is added in. I often take the bus because the time to find parking, and then walking to my destination is an extra 10-15 minutes on my door-to-door time. It also saves me serious ;money because, about once a month I arrive downtown with insufficient change, or I need to be there more than 2 hours. Has anyone tried the Link? It runs every 8 to 10 minutes in a barbell shaped route between Forest and Hill and the Ann-Ashley parking structure. The "bar" part of the route is from 4th and Liberty to North U and State. At each end, it does a clockwise loop. I tried it last Friday night to get between North Main and the Diag area, hopping on and off as I pleased. It's free until the end of September. Worked pretty well on Saturday afternoon too. Coop, library, Red Hawk, etc are all easy to get to.
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(In addition to the slower average speed, the bus takes a longer route between almost any two points than a car would.) Someone tried to sell me a lottery ticket the other day. When I refused, he asked if I gambled. I replied that I do, but I didn't elaborate: I play parking-meter roulette. If I have the change, I feed the meter. If I don't, sometimes I pay City Hall.
The AATA serves me well. It is how I get to work and back, in 10 minutes, door to door, saving probably $1000.00 a year in parking stickers and gasoline. Taking the bus also makes it dead easy to enjoy Farmer's Market on Saturday mornings, attend Art Fair, and get to Ypsi to meet John for dinner and drive home together, in one car. I took the AATA into consideration when planning our last move. I like the service that much.
To be fair, I took AATA into consideration when planning my last move. It was important to me to live near a bus line as a backup in case my car broke down. This is one reason why I think it is a good idea to spend tax dollars on public transportation
re 57: Yes, commuter lanes are good, but the bus needs to be an express bus, not making many local stops, for that to work. Even better are bus-only lanes, with buses having the right-of-way over individual vehicles. When the bus can scoot down the median of the highway, right past all the fender-benders and stalled cars, in its own lane, bus riders get better service than drivers. It is however, extremely difficult to convince streets and roads folks to give away a lane of asphalt to buses.
Re #56: I think people in Michigan regard carpool lanes as some sort of communist plot. In Minneapolis, buses were allowed to use the shoulder on some stretches of freeway. I got in the habit of doing a right head check before exiting, even if I was in the rightmost lane, just in case there was a bus over there.
If you are going to bother building giving away a whole lane of traffic for busses, you might as well go whole hog and build a trolley or something.
Indeed. Maybe we should never have dismantled the interurban railway system.
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Actually trolleys are counter-productive. With a bus-lane, once the bus leaves the congested primary road, the route can be set to meet the rider's needs. Neighborhood route changes with rubber-tired buses are much easier to implement than with tracks or overhead-wire infrastructure.
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San Francisco has a mix of buses, wheeled buses with overhead wires, and tracked trams with either overhead wirers or third rails. The mix seemed to me to work very well (though I still heard complaints fromlong-time residents about the services).
Some states expressly permit motorcyclists to use restricted lanes, in recognition of their comparable efficiency.
In California electric cars also qualify for the HOV lanes.
Scientists offer fix for SUVs Fuel-efficient vehicle is based on Explorer September 17, 2003 BY TOM AVRIL KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS PHILADELPHIA -- Vilified by critics as gas-guzzling road hogs. Defended by families who crave space for kids and soccer gear. How to defuse the cultural flashpoint that is the SUV? Tuesday, a team of scientists suggested a way: Build a big car with the appetite of a little one. The Union of Concerned Scientists unveiled a blueprint for the Guardian, a vehicle the group said would get up to 36 m.p.g. -- a 71-percent improvement over the Ford Explorer it's based on. The modifications -- all using available technology -- would cost more up-front, but would pay for themselves after five years, said David Friedman, an engineer who codesigned the Guardian. The better mileage would not come at the expense of engine power, he said. "All of the technology is in the hands of the automakers," Friedman said. "The problem is they're not giving it to the average consumer." An automotive trade group dismissed the report as repackaged ideas that are impractical or have been rejected by consumers as too expensive. "Let's see them build it if they can," said Eron Shosteck, spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. "Their vehicle may look good on paper, but we have to make vehicles that drive on pavement."
I'd like to see details. Actually, what I'd really like to see is someone take up the challenge and build a prototype. Eron Shosteck may turn out to be right, but the condescending tone of his remarks annoys me.
Would a manufacturer, like Ford, allow the purchase of as many of the common components as needed for a production model? Unique frame, body, doors, windows, etc would add to the cost of a totally new vechile.
SUVs also are also more prone on turning over than "cars". I read that new rules will require that they be lower, which will also reduce the disproportionate damage to "cars" in collisions.
When visiting a friend in a Chicago suburb, his car was averaging 12 miles per hour going home on the highway. The interurban train was much faster but cost more. Ann Arbor has plenty of population density and could support a much better transit system if more people used it.
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resp:68 I wonder if that's true for Washington-- I remember that they could use the express lanes at least in the Seattle area.
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Re #72: I think the best course would be to buy a production model vehicle and then modify it. Yes, the cost will be higher for a one-off, but that's expected for a prototype. I'm more curious if they can meet their 36 mpg target figure with a real vehicle.
remind me what HOV stands for again? Highway (something) Vehicle?
High Occupancy Vehicle lane
thanks-- I knew I did not have that right at all. Makes much more sense now.
UW-Madison has already gotten about 40 MPG out of a Ford Explorer. http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~vehicle/moolander.htm
If you read carefully, those are *estimated* values, based on a mathematical model.
I'm not just talking about prototype, but a production model, to use as much of high volume production model to get common parts as the best price. Instead of paying for all the engineering on parts that are not part of the fuel efficency plan.
Still at $1.68 at Meijer. It should have gotten back down into the 50's or even 40's by now. Is this like tidal erosion?
$1.46 in rural Lansing-Flint area yesterday. Same in Lansing.
I paid $1.52/gal in Garden City yesterday, and saw $1.57 in Ann Arbor today.
Yeah, I noticed yesterday that the price of regular unleaded had finally fallen back below the cost of diesel. Diesel has been $1.599 at Meijer on Carpenter Road for around a month now. (I have a gasoline-powered car and a diesel-powered van, so I tend to notice both prices.)
When we visited Washington DC last week, I drove from the hotel to the Metro station, paid $3/day to park, and rode the train to whatever we wanted to see. This was fabulous for us. I had no business driving in Washington DC anyway. How would I find parking? I didn't need to anyway; the Metro went everywhere we wanted to go, within a 3 or 4 block walk. It was a very pleasant way to travel. The next time we go to DC, we're going to fly or take the train and depend entirely on the Metro. It's good we didn't do that this time, since we had to flee the hurricane while we were there. I expect we'll have better luck next time with the weather. In Roanoke, Virginia I bought gas for $1.36. Throughout Ohio and also back in Ann Arbor, I paid about $1.59.
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