Take a look at this map.
Lots of reds and greens with some yellows in there.
Now mentally sub in some other colors.
Change the reds and yellows to blue, and change the greens to red.
If you do that, what does the map start to look like? Rather a lot like the election map from 2004. Not perfect, but close.
But this map isn’t a map of voting results. It’s a map of gas prices.
The redder the color of a county, the higher the gas prices. The greener the county, the less gas costs there.
Some of the factors affecting gas prices may be geographic (it’s harder to get gas to some places than others), but the political aspect is not to be ignored.
Big government folks like their governments . . . well . . big, and to fund those big governments they need big taxes. That’s one of the reasons California consistently charges so much more for gas than Arizona. California has a HUGE gas tax compared to other states, and there are gas stations right over the border in Arizona that advertise the fact that you can fill up there without paying the California gas tax.
It works! If I’m heading east, I wait till I get to Arizona to fill up my tank for long road trips. It’s only two hours away, and I’ve usually got enough in the tank to get there before filling up.
It was interesting on my recent trip to see what the gas prices were elsewhere. At one truck stop, a trucker I ran into was positively livid about them and used vulgarity to express himself. At numerous stops people commented to me about how high the prices were.
To me, they weren’t nothin.’
I live in California.
We always have the worst gas prices in the nation.
Thanks to our lovely blue-state legislature.
HERE’S THE SITE THE MAP IS FROM.
AND HERE ARE THEIR TIPS ON HOW TO SAVE MONEY ON GAS.
Interesting map. Especially here in Wisconsin where our Senate killed a bill that would overturn a mandatory gas tax of 9%. No need to tell you we were a blue state in November ’04…
Really cool map Jimmy. You can right click for average price in each county.
Greetings from a New Yorker!
I like gas taxes inasmuch as they encourage people to get more fuel-efficient cars. All-right, so I use public transportation myself so I don’t have to pay, and it’s a bit nasty when big government tries to change your personal choices and get more money for themselves at the same time, and the effort seems to be mostly failing thus far. At least maybe we are using fossil fuels a little less than we otherwise would be.
I find it hard to sympathize with upper and middle-class people who feel the need to have a big truck or SUV to make themselves feel macho, and who then whine about how much they pay at the pump. Just get a Prius! However, there are those who are not so rich but need a big powerful 4WD vehicle to get through bad roads in the mountains or the winter because of where they live or work, or who need a pickup for their job. They are the ones that these prices really hurt.
Greetings from a sad Californian.
I drive a 1999 Suburban because it was one of the few vehicles that has nine seats. We fill up 8 of the seats (two adults and six children) so far and filling up a 42 gallon gas tank at $3.15 a gallon stinks.
Fortunately there is hybrid SUVs out now, though I think they only seat 7. Hopefully they will come out with still bigger hybrids. These gas prices should help that happen.
My mother’s family had 9 children and all 11 people fit in one Volkswagen Beetle, but that’s not legal any more (may not have been then either, and it could not have been comfortable or safe).
Sigh.
One more reason I hate living in LA LA Land.
Man, I miss the Midwest.
Car? What’s a car?
I commute by bus and train.
I had the exact same thoughts when I first saw this map. I wonder if it’s been updated? I could have sworn New York was in the red too, when I saw it a few days ago.
Another Wisconsonite here, who drives a 95 GMC 12-seater, cause I just couldn’t fit all the car seats in the minivan. We don’t go anywhere very often.
Old Zhou: Regarding this “bus” and “train” of which you speak. In Lost Angeles, people sometimes say such words with awe and mystery, but mostly just disgust. Surely they exist here, but only as magical (or–shudder–magickal, judging from some of the patrons) devices which turn a 30 minute commute into a 3 hour exercise in olafactory tolerance. Of course, in rural Wisconsin, where I’m from, such things exist only for school children and cattle.
Do they make the 7 seater SUVs as hybrids? I understood that the smaller SUVs (the ones that seat 5 people) were the only ones currently available in a hybrid. Of course, by the time that you factor in the massive extra costs to buy a hybrid, is it worth it, even at current gas prices?
The gas saving tips on the website Jimmy linked to are true. I’ve used cruise control whenever possible in the truck I currently own & in smaller SUV I had before since about 2001 & it’s saved me a lot of gas. Just set it for the speed limit, tune into the local Catholic radio station, & drive! I’m constantly amazed at how much it economizes on fuel consumption. Before I started using cruise as much as possible (& many folks would be surprised how often you really can use it, & not just on the highways), I had to fill up about every 4 to 5 days. I’m not one that does much over the speed limit but it’s hard to keep a steady foot on the gas to maintain constant speed like cruise can. After I started using crusie control, I found that I’d only have to fill up every 7 to 10 days! And I didn’t decrease the amount of traveling I was doing. Amazing.
And, using crusie control, you really notice how other drivers speed up & slow down. It’s remarkable. Seriously, try it!
Dear Jared,
If you ever come to San Francisco, or nearby, I would encourage you to savor the public transportation.
It is true that, especially late at night, you might need to move to avoid the chemically enhanced and/or damaged.
But in an area where a large fraction of the populace uses public transit, it is a wonderful experience.
You actually meet people outside your immediate family (which is unusual in your private automobile). I have had many conversations with students on the bus and train, including seminary students.
And few things are more fun that getting on a train or bus pack with 50 excited school children going on a field trip. You’ll never get that in your private automobile.
And you just get more exposure to a broader section of humanity in general on public transit.
And my wife loves it when on a bus in San Francisco we can hear little children talking in her village dialect from China.
I find too much use of the private automobile to be rather isolating. And I feel sorry for people who would rather insist in sitting in their comfy, safe SUV for hours in traffic, and then have to find and pay for parking, instead of making a faster, easier trip by public transit because of some perceived “ick factor” about rubbing elbows with the masses.
me,
The Toyota Highlander hybrid seats 7. How long it takes to make up for the extra cost of buying the hybrid obviously depends on how much driving you do.
And don’t forget the moral value of using less nonrenewable resources and polluting less. Sure it is like voting, one person doesn’t really matter in a practical sense, but the moral obigation is still there to do what you can.
Don’t forget about public transportation either. We have bad public transportation most places in the US because we have historically had, and really still have, pretty low gas prices. Compared to Europe anyway. If we would drive less and use busses and trains to get around when we can, and if we improved our train systems in particular so that it was more useful and reliable, that would go a long way.
There is also bicycling and walking, especially if you are in a city. Unfortunately our roads are often not designed to accomidate anything but cars safely, again because of our low gas prices. Hopefully this will change too, and people in decent shape will stop thinking they need to drive just to travel a few miles down the road.
Occasionally boating works too. I knew (he died a few years ago) GE engeneer who for decades when it was warm enough canoed from his home down the local creek to the Mohawk river then down to Schenectady to work every morning, and back again of course in the evening.
Amy was referring to Wisconsin’s minimum markup law, not a tax. Due to other parts of the law, the markup is typically 4.5%. If it was removed tomorrow, it wouldn’t change a thing. Our problem in Wisconsin is our excessively high gas tax.
Old Zhou: To each his own, I guess. I’m not really big on crowds. Still a country mouse, even if I do have to live in a city due to my current occupation.
Then again, when it comes to crowds I guess quite a few of the saints didn’t like ’em much either. One of the things I miss about Wisconsin is the driving for miles with just the car, the road, and the Lord. I could discern His voice a lot better at that time than almost any other.
I love my Honda Civic! It gets great mileage and I’m not out to impress anyone with it.
I’m in the same boat as a few other commenters– more than five kids and a minivan won’t work. I drive a 12-seat passenger van. When we bought it in 2001, I really did look to see if there was a fuel-efficient version available, and would have paid more for it, but there wasn’t. My only options were regular fuel and diesel.
Public transit is lovely in densely populated areas. I went to school in Boston and NEVER drove because I could get everywhere quickly and easily via the T and the bus. Moved to Silicon Valley after marriage with no driver’s license, and quickly learned what a miserable experience suburban public transit can be. A twenty minute drive to the pediatrician’s was well over two hours on public transit– walk a mile from the house, take a bus, take the light rail, take another bus, walk another half mile to the office. Then, repeat on the way home with a seriousy cranky infant who’s just received multiple vaccinations. Needless to say, I learned to drive quickly… 🙂
Jimmy you are right about “other factors” such as politics.
The highest gas prices in Washington state are in Whatcom County (NW corner next to Puget Sound and Canada). Bellingham has $3.19 per gallon… and it is in Whatcom County that the refineries exist that ship the gas to the rest of the state and points south (and directly onto ships to Alaska).
-t.i.m.
I don’t have a car. We have a bus system that goes by an hour to an hour and a half apart (depending on route and weekday, and if it shows up). Said bus system doesn’t go most of the places I want to go.
And so, I do walk a lot. Did I mention we don’t have sidewalks on most of the roads?
Yeah, you don’t have to get in the car to go a few miles. As long as you’re willing to allot 40 minutes to an hour to get there. Yeah, buddy. In the summer, when you’re sweating to death and your legs are chafing and your head is aching from glare and you stink when you get there. In the winter, when you’ve got the wind blowing in your increasingly numb face, and your butt won’t get warm again for hours. In the snow, when the drifts are up to your thighs, and the snowplow snow is taller than you are. In the rain, when your feet get soaked and muddy, and you slip on the grass nearly into traffic. In the dark, with headlights glaring into your eyes.
When I reflect that a car can get all the way from Dayton to Cincinnati in the time it takes me to walk-jog to church, somehow the delights of walking do not recommend themselves to me.
If I could ever manage to learn how to drive on a highway without panicking, and thus pass the driving test, I would get a car in a hot second. My abject fear of hitting other people and dying is getting to be a lot less serious than the inconvenience of walking.
So quit yer gas price bitchin’.
Here in NJ we’re actually talking about making the leap to (gasp!) self-serve. Shocking as it may be, I’ve only had to fill my own tank once, this being last year in DC–with the assistance of my sister. (If you knew my sister’s rather poor relationship with mechanical devices, that statement would be much more shocking.)
Should we lose full service here, I don’t know when–or even if–you’ll here from Jerseyans again. Protests, riots, and civil unrest of the first order are sure to ensue. We’ll pull up to stations and wait and wait and wait, but to no avail. Eventually we’ll give up and just start roaming the streets on foot, stunned and disheveled in a desperate, futile search for SOMEONE who can fill our tanks, all the while mumbling things like “Where’s the attendant?” and “It looks open…” Sooner or later we’ll stumble out of the state. Those of you in Pennsylvania and New York, be ready for a massive influx of New Jersey gasfugees. Please, please if you find one such poor, bedraggled New Jersey soul, be kind and demonstrate how to use the pump (::shudder::) manually. Be patient, as we are new at this and more than a litte scared.
God help us all.
I think the reason public transportation in the US is so lacking is not because of low gas prices but because so many Americans are incapable of paying attention to simple details like punctuality.
Public transportation works best in places where people are free to obsess over seemingly trivial details like Germany and Japan.
Of course, being a small country helps too.
Actually, I’m pretty sure the reason public transpo isn’t common here has much more to do with Geography. Travelling from state to state here is more akin to travelling from nation to nation in Europe. If you’ve driven cross country, you know just how much uninhabitted space there is in this nation.
Jared,
I have to admit I am skeptical about that. There is a good deal of uninhabited space and tons of rural land in Europe, not as much as here but more than some imagine before going there. Regardless of that though, Europeans have better pubic transportation on a local level, within nations, and between nations. That’s not geography, that’s how the transportation system developed there. We could have, or at least could have had, the same thing here if we had not put all our money into roads for cars. Trains can cross the desert or the plains as easily as cars. Suburban streets here often don’t even have sidewalks. Also teenagers are allowed to drive here, unlike in most of Europe. I really think it comes down to gas prices leading to different transportation habits.
Mmm, I’m sceptical. I’d look up the population density stats but, it’s way past my bed time.
My uncle lives in a very small town in Nebraska. I’m convinced that no public transpo would ever go there and it’s about an hour’s drive from the freeway, from what I remember.
However, regardless of the other reasons, I do like the autonomy afforded by the private automobile, the freedom to go wherever, whenever, even now, after 3 a.m., in relative safety. I like the privacy, the ability to hold private conversations with someone without needing to worry who might be listening. The ablity to take my stuff around with me (particularly the stuff I need for work), without needing to be able to physically carry it all at the same time. (How are you gonna carry a gymnastics mat on a bus? I did carry a cedar chest on a bus in Chicago once, until I discovered it’d be faster to just sling it over my back and run. Long story.)
The fact that one of my brothers was pickpocketed (or rather had three different pickpocketers attempt to accost him) on public transpo in Germany and France; that my wife (before I knew her) was repeatedly harassed, threatened, etc. on public transpo in Milwaukee; and my own personal experiences on the bus in Chicago (not just the cedar chest incident but several other incidents) … yeah, I like cars.
Granted my wife also experienced an attempted car-jacking (attempted because the slime didn’t know how to drive a manual transmission), but still … cars are cool.
Bob,
I think that the immigrants to New Jersey will adapt, but the natives who knows. Hope they do, because it means that I will have even more reason to buy NJ gas. It’s cheaper than Pennsylvania gas. (I commute from 1 state to the other.)
Okay I guess I wasn’t too tired after all.
Go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World_population_density_map.PNG
You’ll see a pretty substantial difference between the US and Europe. Also this map doesn’t take into account gradations within the US (ie by state), whereas it breaks down Europe into each component nation. Considering how much of US population is centered around just a few major cities, spread out quite a distance from each other and from points between (what city folk call “fly-over country”), I really don’t see a good alternative to the car or something like it (whatever power source it may eventually take on).
This is why I keep telling everyone to come to my new state. Come to Missouri: beautiful land, sparsely populated, and… the lowest gas prices in the Union!
Jared, certainly the United States has a lower population density than most of Europe, no question about that. There are also areas where public transportation would never go, just like I imagine there are little towns and houses in the woods of Northern Scandinavia and elsewhere that will never get train or bus stops. However, the vast majority of Americans live in areas and travel to areas where pubic transportation would work just fine. Indeed, I use public transportation to get just about everywhere, so the infrastructure is already pretty much in place. If more people would use it and more money put into it, our public transportation would become more convenient (more trains to a given area per day etc.) and there would be more stops, so you could get to more places directly.
Little towns in Nebraska: maybe not, but most people have never been and will never go to a little town in Nebraska. Most of our transportation could be handled with buses, trains, subways, and whatever else we invent. It is less convienient in some ways, which is why with low gas prices Americans have chosen to rely on cars. There would be times when you need to transport large objects or something, so cars or the equivalent will never I think disappear, but could stay in the garage a lot more.
“Public transportation works best in places where people are free to obsess over seemingly trivial details like Germany and Japan.”
As the grandson of a US veteran in WWII, I have difficulty regarding Germany and Japan as trivial details.
No-name,
Stubblespark was talking about how in Germany and Japan (I can only vouch for the former) put much more value on the virtue of punctuality than Americans do. He was not saying that those countries are trivial details, but that they pay attention to what we Americans think are trivial details (esp. punctuality). He may have a point about that influencing the quality of their public transportation system, though it may be a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg situation.
By the way, I hope you do not harbor ill-feeling toward Germany and Japan. I am also a grandson of a US WWII veteran. He was born in Germany, came to America when he was 6 years old, experienced all kinds of anti-German harassment between the world wars, and then fought on the side of America in WWII. Anyway, it is not fair at all to hold any kind of grudge against Japan and especially Germany for that period of history they are so embarassed about.
Ich liebe Deutchland!
Part of the reason that we don’t have more public transit systems in the US is because…
…in the 1950’s the automotive industry killed them.
There was a perfectly wonderful train system in the East Bay (across from San Francisco) called the Key Route system. All that is left is a few tunnels and street names. National City Lines, a front company funded by General Motors, Firestone Tires, Standard Oil and Phillips Petroleum, bought the train system after WW2 in the late 1940’s, and proceded to kill it. The Key Route system served the whole area from Richmond and El Cerrito down to San Leandro. Much more coverage than BART, built in the 1960’s.
Los Angeles also had the Pacific Electric Red Car system and the Los Angeles Railway. The system was dismantled in 1963. The modern, recently built rail system is only a faint shadow of what was before the old systems were dismantled. In the 1950’s, streetcars connected L.A., Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
Yes, there were alternatives to driving.
But the coalition of the automakers, oil companies and tiremakers took that apart….and it was just so much more “cool” to drive your own car in the 1960’s. Freedom! Independence! and 10 cents a gallon for gas.
Guys? Can you point out any places where public transpo actually supports itself financially? I ask because I’ve never heard of it happening. All of my research back in the days when I lived in Wisconsin and I paid attention to the Milwaukee “light rail debate” reinforces the fact that most mass transit systems are too expensive to be able to support themselves. (You can say this is due to lack of use, but that’s precisely the point: many people–Americans in particular–don’t like it and won’t use it, since, no matter how good it gets, it’s not as good as having your own car.) Mass transit is a perpetual drain on tax dollars in all of the locales in which I have experience. This inefficiency is not due to auto-makers, or tire manufacturers, or oil companies. It’s simple capitalism. (And yes, freedom , independence, and autonomy. And all of these are perpetual American values, some of the few good values that this country still possesses.)
I accept that you like mass transit. It costs a lot of tax-payer money, but I accept that you like it. Can’t you simply accept that some of us like our automobiles?
Having been raised in California with lovely lighted streets and highways with call boxes and bridges that don’t fall down on commuters for seemingly no reason, I kinda wish we had more gas taxes out here.
Then again, driving through the middle of nowhere without a single light visible on the horizon turns a road trip into more of an adventure.
Then again, I also usually bike or walk wherever I’m going so I don’t worry too much about the cost of gas.
Nothing wrong with liking automobiles.
This morning on the way to mass I was behind some guy driving a 1947 Bentley (with driver on the right). Fascinating.
But I think that what is bothersome is that, in many cases, there is no choice. To get from Point A to Point B, you must drive. But gasoline is no longer 10 cents a gallon, as it was in Los Angeles in 1960. And, to be honest, the road infrastructure is decaying, and road maintenance is getting to be a significant drain on public funds.
California is abandoing the roadside emergency call box system (you better have a cell phone if you drive).
This was not the case in, say, 1940, where most urban areas had decent public transit systems. Streets were smaller (because nobody parked on them), and many houses were built without garages until the 1950’s (unthinkable now). Those that had cars often used them for recreational drives to the country. Few people drove to work. And why should your employer have to provide a parking space for your personal automobile?
Now, automobile parking and traffic are the single largest factors in urban planning and redevelopment, and the single largest objection to most development efforts (including building senior and affordable housing near transit corridors).
Cars are fine, but they do not come “free.”
And it is hardly a “choice” if there is no practical alternative form of transportation.
(Personally, I would rather ride a horse. But horses are not allowed on most existing roads around here.)
“But horses are not allowed on most existing roads around here.” And, if they were, there would probably be an ordinance requiring the rider to carry a HUUUUGE pooper-scooper.
Personally, I think the high gas prices are a good thing. Maybe it will get America to finally buckle down and take energy conservation seriously.
I take a vanpool to work every day.
Joy: It’s not a good thing. It’s raising food prices and the price of any other goods that require transportation by gasoline-using apparatus. Which of course leads to inflation. It is a manefestly bad thing, no matter how one comes down on the car vs. public transpo issue.
Hi
I think you are lucky. Here in Sweden the price is 6.48 USD for a gallon and it is almost the same in whole Europe.