Gas Prices

[wideload]

Golly, ,my GAS price is about $11,000 for the Buckeye Burl Mark King in the showroom at Alembic. What a beauty!
 
Larry

[tbrannon]

$1.52 NZ per liter (roughly $5.80 US/gallon).   Diesel is up there as well.  
 
It's a good thing I commute on my bike.
 
(Message edited by tbrannon on October 26, 2005)

[kmh364]

When I was in OZ in late '03, the Aussies were crying that regular was $1AUD/litre! At the time, that was about $2.70 per gal (@ $1AUD = $0.67USD). I can just imagine what it is now!

[mpisanek]

You guys in the Good Ol' U S of A are lucky, very lucky.  Your gas prices will drop down to a very low level again.  While the rest of the world will suffer from high petrol prices ad infinitum!

[matthijs]

That is, until the american (texas) oilfields run out. Which will be 20-30 years before the rest of the world's oilfields do. THEN americans will know what high oil prices are.

[kmh364]

Yes, unfortunately. The EU taxes petrol to death. Fuel efficient vehicles are a must there, utility be damned. In the good 'ole gluttonous, wasteful U.S. of A., we can indulge our whims of luxury, space, V-8 torque and utility IFF fuel prices are resonable. The biggest auto manufacturers in the world count on that to stay alive. Dubya is so busy counting his oil revenues, he forgot about all that. Sure we're wasteful...I'm guilty myself. But after years of slumming in foreign-made econoboxes that had no power and no room for me to even be comfortable in (nevermind haul stuff), I gotta drive something full size. I spend two hours minimum a day in my vehicle, and that's just for work...40kmiles in 15mos! Even considering the load I dump every month for a car payment installment, insurance and maintenance, the doubling or tripling of fuel has had a major impact on my budget. It's still not enough for me to force myself to bend my self into a pretzel in another econobox to save a several hundred dead presidents a year, however...yet, LOL!

[gare]

'Dubya is so busy counting his oil revenues'..I thought he had the guys from Haliburton taking care of that ?  
 
I'll have to go along with Kevin, we are a wasteful, gluttonous, arrogant people, we have to show the world we have bigger gonads. We gotta have the big V-8, 4x4, capable of towing Mt.Everest..just because.
But reality is starting to slowly settle in. My cost of getting to and from work has more than doubled since the 1st of the year..no raises in sight either.
I guess my biggest complaint is sitting in traffic, traffic lights could be sync'd better, who's the guy in front of me talking to on the phone at 6 in the morning ?  You have a bathroom at home, please shave, put on makeup, etc there. Same thing for the kitchen, you have one, use it.  And a vehicle moving at 60 mph is not a library.
But until somebody comes out with a Mr.Fusion like in Back to the Future, we're all kinda stuck arent we ? Or maybe someone could start working on an engine that will run on urine..now wouldn't that be handy ?

[mpisanek]

You guys need a good public transport infrastructure!  Just think about it, cheap transportation, on time, no traffic jams, and fuel efficient!  Wouldn't life be wonderful!

[kmh364]

Sounds great, but politics rule. Everyone wants better mass transit, until they have to pay for it (taxes), it has to go in their back yard, or blocks their view, or needs to take-up valuable real-estate, or...(fill in the blank), etc. Man, here in Jersey, land is so precious they're trying to reclaim and build on protected wetlands as there's no more land to be had. People are buying old houses with property for exorbitant multiples of what they're worth and tearing 'em down to build a new, ridiculously expensive homes because you can't get property here anymore. The roads are horrible, getting more clogged each passing day from the continual influx due to NYC suburban sprawl and others looking to make bux in the city. No real infrastructure is being added nor is any mass transit being developed to handle the influx, but taxes, fuel, property values, etc., keep going up! We're getting more Wal-Marts, Home Depot's and strip malls, though! LOL!

[811952]

Mass transit has got to be the answer long term.  Until then it's the motorcycle for me.  52 mpg on the last tank, and the tank before was 57 mpg.  I think I recall reading some years back that 6 fully loaded semi trucks used the same amount of diesel on a coast-to-coast trip as a 100-car freight train, due to rolling resistance, gradients and all that stopping and starting...
 
John (who rode to work in this morning's 39 degree farenheit chill and enjoyed it)

[gare]

' We're getting more Wal-Marts, Home Depot's and strip malls.'  
And we need our big, gas, guzzling trucks and SUV's to haul all the new stuff we buy from those stores with all our desposible income  !  
It's the American way !
So what if the card is at 21%, the back seat is half empty ! LOL!!!

[keith_h]

The problem with mass transit isn't the taxes needed to support it but the way metropolitan areas have grown in the US. Instead of urban development with well defined employment centers we have grown on the suburban model. This results not only in the distribution of housing but also of employment. This precludes building fixed transit systems such as trains and subways leaving us with busses. Unfortunately busses are not very good for long distance commuting. They leave gaps in routing that everyone then use as an excuse to drive their car. The only way to really get good mass transit  is to change the development model to one that utilizes urban growth with centralized employment areas.  
 
Keith

[richbass939]

Gasoline is at the high end of the USA price range here where I live but I am only 1 mile from work.  If I catch both lights green I get to work in 4 minutes (both red it takes more like 6).
Rich

[matthijs]

You are 1 mile from work and you drive? With habits like that I'd say let oil prices rise a little more to root them out

[mpisanek]

I currently own a Nissan Primera Estate.  It is a turbodisel, six cylinder and gets roughtly 45 MPG.  The engine is roughly the same size as the old dodge 225 cubic inch, and with the turbo is pretty peppy.    I think a little more thought by auto manufacturers and importers wouldn't go astray.