Gas... and mass transit.

[strredwolf]

Gas is now hovering $3 here in Maryland, and predicted to go to $3.50 (and that's for one gallon).  It makes me wonder...

$3.50 for a gallon of gas.  That's $52.50 for a 15 gallon tank -- and I belive you have to fill up at least twice, if not three times, a month.

Compare with mass transit.  In Maryland, $3.50 is an all-day pass on most transit systems.  A monthly pass is $64 flat -- that's 18 and nearly a third gallons, and you get to travel EVERYWHERE that's covered.  If you reduce your fillups to like 1-2 a month just by doing that, then you're set!

Comments

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

I fill my car 6 times a month at worst. 4 times at best. I have $150 budgeted out for it. My car has a 12.5 gallon tank but I always fill it pretty close to exactly 10 gallons low. Each fillup had been around $25 until recently, when it spiked up a bit to $27. It'd be about $29 now.

Unfortunately, our mass transit here shuts down HARD at 6pm sharp. This, combined with the fact that it takes 2 hours to get from my house to work on it with 3 transfers, makes it completely unusable to me. (The same trip is 20 minutes with a car.)

You could get yourself a VW Jetta at about 50mpg diesel and fuel up half as often as I do.

[dashutri.livejournal.com]

I blame the oil industry for holding back other forms of power.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

That's like blaming the people who sell rice because the barley farmers can't come up with something that is competitive.

It's not the oil industry who is at fault for the lack of alternative energy sources. Oil and Gasoline are Commodity products whose prices are pretty much set by supply and demand. The only reason we don't have alternate forms of power that are viable is because the companies researching and developing these forms haven't found a way to make them competitive against the low prices of gasoline and worth the investment by the consumers. They're simply too expensive compared to gasoline. Now that gasoline prices are climbing, expect to see alternate forms of energy get a push. Sooner or later they WILL be cheaper than gasoline.