2012 Set Record For Most Expensive Gas In US 430
An anonymous reader writes "According to data from the American Automobile Association, the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. was higher in 2012 than in any year before it. Nationwide, gas averaged $3.60/gallon, up from $3.51/gallon in 2011. 'The states with the most expensive annual averages for 2012 included Hawaii ($4.31), Alaska ($4.09), California ($4.03), New York ($3.90) and Connecticut ($3.90). The states with the least-expensive annual averages included South Carolina ($3.35), Missouri ($3.38), Mississippi ($3.39), Tennessee ($3.40) and Oklahoma ($3.41). The highest daily statewide average of the year was $4.67 in Calif. on Oct. 9, while the lowest daily statewide average was $2.91 a gallon in South Carolina on July 3.' Bloomberg reports that fuel consumption is down 3.6% compared to last year, while U.S. oil production reached almost 7 million barrels a day recently, a level that hasn't been reached since 1993. AAA predicts gas prices will be cheaper in 2013."
Price (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Price (Score:5, Informative)
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Venezuela pays for their own fuel, in order to keep people happy. Everybody in their declining oil industry knows that - and everybody else, as it's pretty obvious. One of the promises of Chavez' government before it's first election was to bring the price to a level where companies would be at least even. After he rose to power, he stopped talking about it, as it would mean the end of his popularity.
Re:Price (Score:5, Informative)
Due to short term thinking like that, Venezuela is a rotten country which, without the fortunate accident of having the largest oil reserves in the world, would be an impoverished hellhole like Cuba. 80% of Venezuela's exports are oil. Without oil, Venezuelans would be living on $20/month just like Cubans. Oh and did I mention that Venezuela has the 5th highest murder rate in the world and I'm not talking "among developed countries". People complain about the US rate of 4.2 per 100K, try Venezuelan rate of 45 per 100K.
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The bottom line is that every centrally planned economy will fail, every time. And not just fail but fail spectacularly, as in cannot feed its population without outside help, as Cuba received for decades from USSR which paid for it's oh so wonderful (actually crumbling since the end of free money from Russians) medical system.
Um, Russia (aka the former USSR) hasn't been subsidizing Cuba for something like two decades now. Cuba imports a smaller percentage of its food than the USA does. And as far as healthcare goes, current WHO numbers put Cuba roughly on par with the USA for the standard measurements like life expectancy and infant mortality. So when you talk about a crumbling medical system, make sure you specify which country you are referring to.
Every single socialist country has failed... Preemptive statement for idiots: "Socialist" actually means state owned and centrally planned economy. Yes, it really does, look it up in a dictionary if you must. No, Sweden does not have state owned, centrally planned economy, it has a capitalist, free market economy
Typically referred to as 'Social Democracy' or a 'Mixed Market Economy'. And fra
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Every single socialist country has failed
History tells us that every nation falls given enough time. The USA is in the midst of failing spectacularly again as it did during the great depression. You may not live where the food is produced so you may not have seen the "CONGRESS CREATED THE DUST BOWL" signs from farmers overpumping aquifers and killing their topsoil with synthetics.
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It's not a quip. US law is made largely according to the wishes of multinationals, via the mechanism of lobbyists funding politicians. That is corrupt.
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It's not a quip. US law is made largely according to the wishes of multinationals, via the mechanism of lobbyists funding politicians. That is corrupt.
GP is correct. The corruption here is nothing like it is in Venezuela. I'm not saying it shouldn't be fixed, but I do definitely appreciate it. I don't have to worry about getting arrested by men with machine guns as I ride the bus so that I'll pay bribe money to get it back. When I was in Venezuela, it was a constant worry. I carried a photocopy of my passport with me, and kept the original in a bank safety deposit box. I knew plenty of people who were arrested only to be charged money to get their pas
Re:Price (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that near 2007~2008 they seized ExxonMobil assets and kicked them out, making their refineries state-controlled, which is really awful.
Why is that so bad? Far better to take the profit for the country than simply give it to a foreign company.
Except that the next big multinational that comes along might decide that it's not worth building those assets if the government may simply come along name their own price and take it [washingtonpost.com].
Just because you're picking on a bad guy doesn't make it fair.
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Except that the next big multinational that comes along might decide that it's not worth building those assets if the government may simply come along name their own price and take it.
1920: Creole Petroleum Corporation opens up shop in Venezuela
1928: Standard Oil of New Jersey buys CPC
1972: SO of NJ is renamed Exxon
1976: Venezuela nationalizes its oil industry
2007: ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips refuse to allow Venezuela's state-run energy company to assume majority control of a few projects
2007: Venezuela 100% nationalizes ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips' holdings
2012: ExxonMobil gets a fraction of what they were asking in court and arbitration
What your Washington Post article (unsurprisin
Re:Price (Score:5, Interesting)
1976: Venezuela nationalizes its oil industry
2007: ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips refuse to allow Venezuela's state-run energy company to assume majority control of a few projects
2007: Venezuela 100% nationalizes ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips' holdings
2012: ExxonMobil gets a fraction of what they were asking in court and arbitration
What your Washington Post article (unsurprisingly) leaves out is that everyone else went along with Venezuela's long term plan.
Exxon tried to play hardball and lost.
At the risk of sounding like a Libertarian what you're describing isn't cooperating with the government, it's a mob shakedown.
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Probably because it tells foreign companies that investing into your country's economy is a very bad idea. Hell not just foreign ones, even domestic ones whose industries they've also nationalized. They're going to pay pretty dearly for that when the hype dies down and suddenly they find they are behind the rest of the world technologically and no commercial interests want to touch them with a ten foot pole.
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It has to do with rule of law.
Property law varies from place to place. For example nomads don't believe that you can own land, they believe the land owns you.
Nationalization is a euphemism for stealing.
I don't personally agree with Hugo but I do believe that ultimately a nations resources belong to it's people, this is why there are eminent domain laws in all modern nations. Nationalization is the same thing, except it targets powerful people who have a heavy influence on entire industries rather than just the plebs who refuse to budge just because some robber-barron needs a rail
Re:Price (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really wonderful in the short term. In the longer term when the current production wells dry up and billions of dollars are needed to discover more oil in Venezuela, I hope the country has the capital and the expertise to develop those new wells, because there's no way any foreign oil company or investor will even dream of getting involved.
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I had to do a dollar/gallon conversion but in Canada we pay north of $4.24/gallon.
We extract our own oil (Canada) ship it to the US and they ship back gasoline, but you think they would cut us a deal!
Re:Price (Score:4, Interesting)
Still cheaper than my country (Colombia) We extract oil in our land, and yet we have quite high prices. On average ~4.65 US for low octane fuel (81 ~ 84!!!) and the high octane fuel (which is really a joke by international standards) is ~5.50 US for 87~90 in octane scale
Do you mean RON (Research Octane Number) or AKI (Anti-Knock Index)... Because most cars are designed to run on 91 RON. Most performance cars run 95 RON.
RON is used in most of the world to grade fuel with RON 91 being standard, RON 95 is premium and RON 98 is super (RON 94 and RON 100 are used by some countries). AKI is used in North America.
srsly America. (Score:4, Interesting)
you have cheap fuel. Really. http://imgur.com/r/MapPorn/YIpi5 [imgur.com]
Re: Seriously, America? (Score:5, Informative)
Gas prices before taxes are fairly consistent throughout most of the developed world. My understanding is that the difference between Europe and the United States has arisen primarily because Europe taxes as a percentage of the price, while the United States taxes on the amount of gasoline. Hence, if the base price doubles, the taxes also double in Europe, but stay the same in the United States. Over time, the difference in price has risen, and should be expected to grow even larger.
Re: Seriously, America? (Score:5, Informative)
The UK does both: there is a fixed tax (a "duty"), and a percentage (VAT). The VAT applies to the duty as well as the base price.
The current rate is 58p per litre. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocarbon_oil_duty [wikipedia.org]
The petrol station opposite my house is selling fuel for £1.39/L, so the cost is (58p fuel + 58p duty) * 1.20 VAT = £1.39.
I think it's the same mechanism in the rest of the EU.
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They have a fixed rate (2.19 pounds/per US gallon) but then they add a 20% VAT tax into the mix. So it ends up being pretty substantial.
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Russia and Brazil have FAR higher gas prices than US. I'd call this bollocks.
About the same as 1980 in real terms (Score:5, Interesting)
In real dollars, [sandiego.edu] i.e. corrected for inflation, it's about the same as in 1979-1980.
It's interesting, without shortages and lines at the pump, how much less threatening it seems. I remember visiting my aunt that Christmas and being quite concerned because our tank wasn't big enough to hold gas for the whole round trip, and in addition to lines, many, many gas stations had short hours--there was no certainty of being able to find a gas station open on Christmas day.
Re:About the same as 1980 in real terms (Score:4, Insightful)
It's interesting, without shortages and lines at the pump, how much less threatening it seems.
It is less threatening, because the price is a fabrication. There's no shortage of oil today, only massive collusion in the form of price fixing, and what the market will bear.
Re:About the same as 1980 in real terms (Score:4, Insightful)
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It touched $1 for a week or so. I remember that week
After that it was up up and away
It's called inflation (Score:4, Interesting)
The increase in the price of gas is 2.5%, The average inflation rate for 2012 was 2.1%. So the increase was 15% over inflation but that is understandable. I bet most of the things we but would have a highest price ever this year.
Re:It's called inflation (Score:5, Insightful)
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Inflation rate is the weighted average of price changes in a number of categories. I was just trying to point out that price increases are a natural outcome of inflation. People demand more wages so the price of the product they produce go up. Overall, prices will always go up from year to year it is not news.
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Uh oh, you better check some real sources...like the BLS website. Looks like food [bls.gov] is in fact the top item category in the CPI-U calculation. The Federal Reserve uses the all items less food and energy, known as the "Core", CPI-U numbers even though the BLS releases numbers including and excluding food and energy. Even then the Fed uses PCE numbers to make actual policy decisions rather than the CPI. The PCE calculation is close to the Chained CPI-U numbers the BLS now releases which take into account things
Ok I dislike Obama.. (Score:2)
However high gas prices are more a result of a weak dollar than any other reason including the war on fossil fuels. Also see the cost of bacon, gold, copper, etc. Even if demand falls if the oilfield production costs go up and the dollar falls in value on a globally traded commodity it really isn't rocket science.
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The weak US dollar is moving jobs to the US.
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That is true. I said nothing contrary to that :) weak dollars are actually good in a lot of ways, and but they don't inspire confidence in other countries to keep them.
Re:Ok I dislike Obama.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes we here in Australia are cursing the weak US dollar, as it makes our own dollar very strong (has been worth slightly more than the US dollar for a few years now), even though traditionally it's only been worth 70-80 US cents. This really hurts our manufacturing and export sectors, and also, importantly, tourism, which is a huge industry in Australia. Americans now reject the idea of vacationing here because using their weak dollar, the prices seem outrageous here (and I don't blame them). 10 years ago the USD:AUD was more than DOUBLE what it is now. Combined with inflation this means that an American would be paying (in USD terms) almost triple what they would have in 2001 for the same Australian trip (except for airfares, which are presumably bought from an American airline and thus paid in USD).
OTOH the weak USD/strong AUD has made it very attractive for Australians to visit (and shop in) the US. Apparently Australians are now the one of the most common incoming passenger nationalities into California (impressive considering our small population). For shopping sprees worth over a few thousand, it's cheaper to fly to the US, buy everything, and fly back, than it is to shop locally, because the weak USD makes US prices look ridiculously cheap to us now (a decade ago they were roughly on-par).
Having said all that - the USD is unique, being the global reserve currency. While I would normally agree with you that "weak currencies ... don't inspire confidence in other countries to keep them", I think the USD is the exception to that rule. Being the reserve currency, there really is no choice but to keep USD. It's still (somehow, amazingly) seen as stable and risk free. Unlike say, when the AUD gets weak (it's strong now and a very popular currency to hold given that cash interest rates here are still 3+%, compared with close to zero elsewhere, but it will be abandoned in a split second as soon as there's a hint of weakness - it's still seen as risky despite our AAA credit rating etc...we just aren't a big or diverse enough economy)
Dear America, (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop it.
There is no sympathy from the rest of the world. Here in Canada "cheap" gas is 4.50USD/Gallon, in Europe its way worse then that, no one wants to hear about it any more. Pick some other non-issue to cry about like how expensive starbucks coffee is or how horrible it is that the millionaire hockey players aren't playing.
Re:Dear America, (Score:5, Insightful)
in Europe its way worse then that
... and even despite that, it costs about the same per kilometer to drive in the EU and UK than it does in the US, thanks to their comically inefficient vehicles.
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Canada has the same problem but compounded. Outside of major cities (and inside some) you can not expect to go anywhere after it snows unless the plow has been by OR you have all wheel drive/4x4 and a high ground clearance. Unfortunately you don't find those features on many high MPG cars and the plows don't hit residential or side streets until some time after noon. You'll also be hard pressed to find a boss in Canada that lets you take snow days ;)
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bull. I have friends in northern canada that have no problems in a Suburau Outback. Low ground clearance and only AWD.
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So for the two or three days a year you might not get to work, you buy a huge 4x4 that spends the other 360-odd days of the year being a collossal drain on your resources?
Yeah, that sounds quite sensible.
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I drive a VW TDI with low-ground clearance front-wheel drive and 4 studded winter tires. I'm not in Ontario, but I can get around pretty well on unplowed roads here in snowy New England (often better than people with 4wd and all season tires). I admit being higher off the ground would be an advantage (I have a small shovel in the trunk for the rare occasions when I get stuck), but 40+ MPG is an advantage too.
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Thats true, but if you have to be at work every day, then your only alternative would be to own 2 cars: 1 for good days and 1 for snowy days. Also there is a risk of unpredicted snow (being stuck at work because your SmartCar cannot be driven on unplowed roads). I'm still going with a car that can be both fuel efficient and good in snow.
Re:Dear America, (Score:5, Interesting)
Note: that's for 2 months of the year... and it only snows that bad 1-5 times a month.
Where the fuck do you live? 2 months out of the year? Ha! I wish.
I live in a city with a population around 35,000 people in Saskatchewan. We get dumped on from mid-october right thru May, spilling into early March.
My cities mayor and board members have their head up their ass, so snow removal takes days on busy streets and most residential areas get one or two pass-overs a year.
I have two cars, a small fairly efficient car my wife uses to go to work, and the family car, an AWD Chevy Equinox.
With good tires and driving with caution, she does well with the small car. Very rarely does she ever need to take the family car to work.
Our monthly gas buget is around $120. A little over what the insurance costs on my Equunox. Really gas prices are not terible, right now sitting at $1.09/L. I don't know the conversion off hand but roughly in my head that's around $4/US Gallon (if someone cares to do the math they are free to do so).
Re:Dear America, (Score:5, Funny)
That Canadian calendar is confusing.
Duh (Score:2)
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The taxes on our income, liquor and tobacco that are all also higher then the corresponding US tax rates.
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Drugs. And broadband.
Oh, and maple syrup. We're sending a raiding party up to capture some.
Nope (Score:2)
Fuck you, it used to be cheap. We want it back that way. The rest of the world agreed to fund social programs and public transport through high fuel taxes. We did not.
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Congrats, you just named the two areas where the US fares very poorly compared to much of the rest of the developed world. Is that something to be proud of?
Only in the US do you complain about the price of cheap gas and also complain that there is no alternative (public transportation). Most other developed countries figured out long ago that you tax private car use to help pay for public transport. As long as you continue to ignore public transportation, it's not going to improve. Every time I travel to th
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Wahh! the dang canadians wont send us more Gravy and cheeses curds for our French Fries!
Who needs gravy and Canadian cheese curds when you can just put chili and some good Wisconsin or Vermont cheddar on your fries instead?
Comparison with Europe (Score:2, Informative)
$4.31 per gallon is 0.86 euro per litre.
i.e. the highest price ever of gas in the worst part of the US is more than two times cheaper than the average price in Europe.
2012 Set Record For Most Expensive Gas In World (Score:4, Insightful)
2012 Set Record For Most Expensive Gas In the World
would have been more interesting since gas is still relatively cheap in the US.
Still half the price (Score:2)
...in Australia.
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...in Australia.
In Australia we pay about US$5.50 to US$6.00 a gallon. A$1.30 per litre (cheap petrol) is about $3.40 for a US gallon.
The excise on petrol is about A$0.40 per litre and that pays for roads, the US has to pay for roads via taxation. Personally I'd rather have the consumption tax as it punishes the heaviest users (I.E. the bogans in V8 utes that get around 18L/100 KM). Also like everything else, fuel is subject to 10% GST.
The average price for just about anything... (Score:5, Insightful)
"the average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. was higher in 2012 than in any year before it"
Huh? The average price for just about anything in the U.S. was higher in 2012 than in any year before it...
Isn't every year a record year for gas prices? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Given that the price of gas keeps going up, isn't every year a record year for gas prices?
When adjusted for inflation, no. [washingtonpost.com] Are price increases really a given? Price decreases also happen. Supply and demand.
Seems to have gone down just after the election (Score:2)
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You do know that US gas prices always go down in winter, right? There are two main reasons. First, summer fuel blends cost more, second, gas is sold to the stations by the tanker gallon. When it is delivered in the summer, the temperature difference between the tanker and the underground storage tanks causes literal shrinkage. Still, they did start going down a bit early this year.
And if you're going to correlate gas prices with elections, the national average price was $1.86/gal when Obama was sworn in, a
It's an energy problem, not an oil supply problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Hydrocarbons we've got. Hydrocarbons != net energy. The stuff with thousand to one energy return is long gone. Oil sands have a net energy of about 4:1. just enough to support extraction AND support some additional activity. It's the "AND" that's shrinking as we slide down the net energy cliff. Adding more oil, natural gas or brown coal with lousy net energy doesn't help that, no matter how much we find. Oil is a special case, unfortunately. The world's "just-in-time" supply chain is totally dependent on plentiful, cheap petroleum fuels. Supply chains break in a nonlinear fashion as feedback kicks in. So the recent innumerate popular press happy-talk is all very well and good. If the numbers are real and not political, it may put off the day of reckoning by 40 years, but almost certainly no longer than that.
And please, please, before you reply, please at least try using google and a calculator.
Re:PEAK OIL! (Score:5, Informative)
Psst buddy: here's a new year's resolution for you:
Starting in 2013, I will no longer use the made-up word "sheeple" which instantly brands me as an underemployed political talk radio addict.
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Psst buddy: here's a new year's resolution for you:
Starting in 2013, I will no longer use the made-up word "sheeple" which instantly brands me as an underemployed political talk radio addict.
And for you, a resolution to learn what a "parody" is.
Re:PEAK OIL! (Score:5, Insightful)
It would cost about another $4 or so per gallon to cover the cost of the road system in the US (or you could come up with some other solution. Technology would allow most roads to be toll roads). Of course, if this huge tax payer subsidy is removed then other forms of transportation would immediately become viable. In other words, trains and buses would become cost effective and the US would get an environmentally friendly transport network.
So, I support you totally in your efforts to tell your socialist representatives to stop subsidizing roads with tax dollars. Please feel free to post copies of the letters you send to them here (or elsewhere).
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I'm disappointed that someone who feels that the free market will provide is using roads that are provided by the tax payers. We should cut this budget cost and move it to the road users.
It would cost about another $4 or so per gallon to cover the cost of the road system in the US (or you could come up with some other solution. Technology would allow most roads to be toll roads). Of course, if this huge tax payer subsidy is removed then other forms of transportation would immediately become viable. In other words, trains and buses would become cost effective and the US would get an environmentally friendly transport network.
So, I support you totally in your efforts to tell your socialist representatives to stop subsidizing roads with tax dollars. Please feel free to post copies of the letters you send to them here (or elsewhere).
As another free marketer, I'd be perfectly happy if all government subsidies were removed from all forms of transit, and all the roads were tolled and privately owned, buses were privatized and taxi cartels were eliminated.
We'd get all those tax dollars back, there would be transit services going where customers wanted to go, not mapping out political districts, and the constant traffic jams would be a thing of the past.
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Please tell me you're being sarcastic.
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I actually support making all the highways TOLL roads and force people to pay a toll to use them based on the weight of their vehicle.
Let the idiots that own that F350 supercab they drive to work in alone and empty every day pay an extra $14.95 to get to work each day... oh and another $14.95 to get home.
Only the leaches of society will use entitlements like Highways, Police, Fire, etc...
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Only the leaches of society will use entitlements like Highways, Police, Fire, etc...
Ah, so you're a bureaucrat yourself, I see? Threaten to cut the basic services instead of winter public pool hours?
Re:PEAK OIL! (Score:4, Informative)
We pay a yearly road tax based on engine size in Belgum. I'm sure it's done the same in other European countries, too, but I've only lived here.
Re:PEAK OIL! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm disappointed that someone who feels that the free market will provide is using roads that are provided by the tax payers. We should cut this budget cost and move it to the road users.
Great! Because in the US, cars are a net revenue producer [dot.gov] for the highway system. I guess we need to seriously bump up the costs of planes, buses, and trains however to make them also pay for the costs of using the systems provided by the tax payers...
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Of course, if this huge tax payer subsidy is removed then other forms of transportation would immediately become viable. In other words, trains and buses would become cost effective and the US would get an environmentally friendly transport network.
ROFL. Stop it, you are killing me. LOL.
US would get an environmentally friendly transport network.
LOL.
The US would get shit. And we would have no choice but to like it. You could put as much economic pressure as you want to get more mass transit and people would end up being forced to fucking walk.
What makes you think economic pressure will cause mass transit to suddenly plop into existence? It will just cause suffering. Government certainly has no interest in actually serving its citizens. I am honestly surprised that parks even exist. There is no way a private
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Socialist? Commie?
Sorry, can't hear you at 160 mph on my bmw bike, as the radio is playing loud something from spotify (oh, mobile internet here is fast and cheap, by the way)
Shut. Up.
You'll get yours when you find out you have to bail out the rest of the EU. Including your friends the Frogs.
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It is the speculation that is largely at fault. And that's the reason Oil Prices have started to come down, as new rules have gone into place with Dodd/Frank that limit big banks speculation in the oil market.
Re:Nah... (Score:5, Interesting)
And they will be used, because it's been the stated goal of the Obama Administration and others to keep fossil fuel costs high in order to "persuade" people to switch to alternatives, like mass transit (powered by windmills, no doubt).
Someone need to remind you WHY WE HAVE A GOVERNMENT.
You seem to think that our society runs "on automatic" and that government interference is "bad"
The NEWS for you is that the entire reason we have a petroleum infrastructure and gas stations and roads and cars is because the GOVERNMENT "persuaded" people to adopt them.
Oh but YOU seem to think that the government gets in the way of civilization when in fact government is the DIFFERENCE between prosperity and despair.
Why don't you TRY to speculate on what the price of gasoline would be if the government were not interfering. Trust me you won't like the answer.
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Good luck driving a car without roads.
(Hey, my look! My knee can jerk too!)
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Well, cities are quite suitable for mass transit. If you live and work in a city, you pretty much don't need a car. You certainly don't need a three tonne 4WD truck that gets through an absurd amount of fuel.
re: mass transit = mass brainwashing (Score:4, Informative)
I grew up in the midwest, where we really didn't have much of a "mass transit system". Sure, we had a bus system, but it was primarily used by people too poor to own their own car, or people unable to get/keep a driver's license (for anything from medical reasons to alcohol problems). Basically, the bus was NOT a pleasant experience to ride.
I was always being told how great the mass transit was in other cities, and how much I'd like it if I didn't actually have to use a car to get around.
Well, I relocated to the D.C. area for a new job, not that long ago, and so far I'm not at all convinced. The fact is, it's really frickin' expensive to get around up here, and most of that really seems to be artificially manufactured by the government. For example, if I go to areas such as Bethesda, MD or the part of Rockville, MD near Bethesda where the red line metro runs and has multiple stations, the taxes placed on gas make it a good 50 cents per gallon or more higher than in the northern part of Rockville, or out in Germantown or Quince Orchard. Worse yet? Everyplace you go in areas near the metro, you're hit up for expensive parking for your vehicle too! If you work in downtown Bethesda, for example, you're stuck parking in one of the municipal parking garages, or possibly in one owned by one of the office buildings you work in. You can count on that costing you a good $140 per month or more. Need to drop a package off at a FedEx location around there, perhaps? Good luck finding street parking without feeding a meter first. Heck -- say you just want to drive your car to the nearest metro station with parking and take the metro in to work from there? Even that will set you back $5 per day, before paying for the metro fare itself -- and many stations have no or very limited parking, so you might drive to a station only to not get a space!
All of this helps create the argument that you should use and love the govt. provided mass transit, because it costs SO much to use your own car instead.
Well -- I tried to do things their way, and IMO, it's severely limiting. Essentially, you give up a considerable amount of your freedom in the interest of avoiding some of the govt. mandated penalties for using your car. On a shopping trip, for example? Good luck carrying anything back that won't fit in a couple of bags. You'll have to lug it on the metro train with you. And say a friend texts you during the work day and asks if you want to meet up at a restaurant after work? Without your car, you may just have to pass on that if it's not one of the places strategically close enough to you or a metro stop so you can get there!
To their credit, the metro trains DO run on a pretty regular and efficient schedule ... but they sure do have a nasty problem with the escalators to/from the below ground stations breaking down. Again, not fun if you're carrying heavy stuff around with you.
The whole thing, to me, stinks of a forced attempt to get people to conform to an environmentally "green" agenda more than anything else. I live far enough west of the metro D.C. area so even their buses to the closest metro stop only come here a few times in the early AM and again, a few times around the dinner hour after work gets out. If I have to work late, no bus for me! And oh yeah, they don't even come out here at all on weekends.
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I hope you don't really think parking fees are some sort of "forced attempt to get people to conform" - space in a metropolitan area is fucking expensive. The space you put your car has to compete, economically, with the value of putting in an office building that actually generates revenue and pays rent.
Expecting whoever owns that land to just let you put your shit there for free is a bit entitled, and bitching about the cost of municipal parking is just completely ignoring the realities of the situation:
Re: mass transit = mass brainwashing (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the alternative? Seriously, what is a more efficient alternative to moving that many people over that distance on a regular basis? It sure isn't automobiles. Try driving around LA or Houston during rush hour if you think that a city that size designed around automobile travel is more efficient.
The fact is that if you live in a major metro area like DC and want to maintain the suburban Midwestern lifestyle you're used to while regularly visiting the city center for work and play, you're going to have to pay for it in time and money. There's just no way around it. I mean, how far are you commuting? West of Fairfax into DC? That's a pretty damn long commute. You can't really complain that the service is poor when you live that far away.
Re: (Score:3)
Thing is, metro systems actually work very well. Come to any major European city (Paris, London or Barcelona immediately spring to mind) and there are so many stations that there's basically no such thing as NOT strategically close to a stop.
Re: (Score:3)
London
Clearly you've never been to London. Or saaaaarfariver.
In the south it's nothing but mud tracks, rude huts and roving bands of visigoths, all because of the lack of tube. At least so people from the north tell me. I think they're allergic to regular trains.
Re:Nah... (Score:5, Interesting)
The gas tax has been declining due to inflation to the point where it doesn't even pay for highway construction/maintenance anymore. The Highway Trust Fund has been running a deficit since 2008, and has to grab general tax revenues to pay for it. I think it's fair to raise the gas tax to a level where it covers the cost of maintaining highways, instead of subsidizing them out of general taxes.
Re:Nah... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't mass transit reduce wear and tear on the roads and ultimately reduce costs?
Re:Nah... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't mass transit reduce wear and tear on the roads and ultimately reduce costs?
Actually, no. Damage to roads goes as the fourth power of weight [road-trans...nology.org] (you can find lots of other sources with the same conclusions). A typical city bus weighs around 12000 kg; a typical car weighs around 1600 kg. Thus a bus does around 3100 times more road damage that a car. Assume that the car carries one person, and the bus carries a full load (seated and standing) of 96; you end up with ~33 times more damage per passenger mile in a bus as a single person in that car.
Weight is what destroys roads, and heavy vehicles really tear it up. A move to more mass transit would not only greatly increase the subsidies required, but seriously accelerate the damage done to the roads.
Re: (Score:3)
Besides the "other mass transit besides buses" reply...
From my understanding from the concept, there are other factors besides weight. There's the axle lengths (between front/back, left/right) and tire width, and number of tires (some buses double-up the tires) to take into consideration. Did you factor those in? Or did you just plug in basic weights.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, and I didn't even get into the fact that it's not just one bus replacing one car on the road, it's one bus replacing 96 cars (presuming a fully loaded bus) on the road. So, using his math that a bus does 33 times more damage to the road than a car, it does not do more damage than 96 cars.
The math is pretty simple:
Weight ratio of a bus to car: 12000 kg / 1600 kg = 7.5 /1 ) to get the damage per passenger mile: 32.96
Damage goes as the 4th power of weight, meaning the damage of a bus is (7.5 ^ 4) 3164 times higher than the car
Assume the car has 1 person, the bus has a full load of 96. Divide the damage of the bus by (96
A fully loaded bus, maximizing it's passenger capability, versus a car with the absolute minimum passenger capability (driver only), does ~33 times more road damage pe
Re: (Score:3)
Good cherry-picking. Now perform the same analysis for NYC.
I'm sorry, when has New York City built a new light rail line? The latest light rail system in the US was in relatively flat and easy Phoenix, and it was $70 million per mile [wikipedia.org]. I would assume building in New York would be considerably higher, given the amount of water and population density relative to Phoenix.
So for Phoenix, instead of being 17 times as expensive as highways, it was only 7 times as much. And we still ignore the fact that rail is heavily subsidized (including light rail - see the Phoen
Re: (Score:2)
It's not cars that cause the deficit, it's subsidies for buses and trains [dot.gov] that are depleting the Highway Trust Fund. Congress authorized spending from that pot of money for mass transit - and it's a massive drain on the system. Conversely, cars actually generate net revenue for the system.
What does "highway" mean? All roads, or just some roads?
(Maybe it's obvious, but I'm not American.)
Re:Nah... (Score:5, Informative)
In the US all public non-toll roads are maintained by the government. The fun part is figuring out at what level of government.
Most/all of the maintenance is done by the local governments and individual states. Not only do individual states tax gasoline sales, they also receive money from the federal government. This is how the US government forces the individual states to do things which would otherwise be unconstitutional.
For example, the US constitution gives individual states the right to set a minimum drinking age. However, if the states wish to receive federal highway funds they must set the minimum above 21. Basically, the federal government implements taxes that should be on the state level, then extorts/bribes the states to pass laws that the federal government constitutionally can not pass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_Act [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Although that's been an effect, and is probably a major motivation these days, the original purpose of the federal government giving states highway grants wasn't to control their drinking laws, but to build the Interstate Highway system. Eisenhower set up that funding mechanism a half-century ago, where the federal government designed and paid for the interstate highway system at an overall level, but individual segments were constructed and maintained by the states they ran through, using funds that transf
Re: (Score:2)
Inflation causes tax windfalls. One of the first things covered in macro econ.
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It's not strictly "too much land, not enough people". Australia has the same huge amount of land and vastly fewer people to fill it, yet has on the whole better mass transit than the US. The difference is that the population is more centralised in Australia (more highly concentrated in the cities, rather than the eleventy billion small towns you get across the US).
So the 'problem' (I wouldn't call it a problem, just a difference in settlement patterns) with America is "lots of land, people more evenly scatt
Re:Try moving to Sweden! (Score:5, Insightful)
Try moving to Sweden! You pay $3.51 a gallon we pay on average $7.65 a gallon! All because of your wars!
And it has nothing to do with your government soaking you for $4 a gallon in taxes.
Re:Price keeps going up (Score:4, Informative)
In the short term the price of gas goes up and down. However in the long term the price of gas goes up and up. It is almost like oil is a non-renewable resource or something. Nah that is crazy commy talk.
No, it's called "inflation," and it happens with all sorts of commodities. We measure it with the Consumer Price Index.
The real cost of commodities generally declines over time. In fact, Julian Simon and Paul Erlich made a famous bet about this. Paul Erlich, you'll recall, was the doomsayer who predicted the population bomb and recommended eugenics, sterilization and a global government control over all resources. (Notably, the coauthor for his book laying all this out was John Holdren [zombietime.com], now Obama's chief science adviser.)
They bet on the prices of various commodities, and every single one of them went down [wikipedia.org]. Simon won his bet, and Erlich had to pay up.
But it doesn't matter how many times you loons are wrong, you'll just keep predicting doom, over and over again.
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks, that was very informative and interesting.
However you leave out at least two things:
1- Julian Simon made another bet on the price of timber with David South, professor of the Auburn University School of Forestry, betting that it would go down over a period of 10 years. However it went up to hard that Simon paid up early to cut his losses.
2- On the subject of the Simon-Erlich bet, if it had been taken on the period 1980-2010 instead of 1980-1990, then Erlich would have won since the price of the meta
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Well duh .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds very sensible to me. Raising gas taxes gradually will:
- Minimise disruption to life and allow people to gradually convert to more efficient vehicles;
- Encourage R&D into alternative technologies, which WILL be needed sooner or later, as well as potentially resulting in a new industry America can dominate in;
- Lead to higher tax revenues, hopefully doing at least a tiny bit to help with the obscene debt the nation is in.
Seriously what's the problem here? The US currently has some of the lowest gas prices (i.e. lowest gasoline taxation rates) of any OECD nation and has ample scope to benefit from raising them gradually, without things becoming too disruptive for the population.
Re: (Score:3)
As an American, I have to agree with you. People here flip out over gas prices but have NO idea how expensive it is in Europe. I'd known for a while, but when I started traveling there I still did a double-take.
Granted, we drive more (which is NOT a good thing) so it probably hurts us more than some other people. At least most of the places I've visited had decent mass transit, but that could just have been luck on my part.
But still, $4/gallon is nothing compared to elsewhere.