Gas prices....

[AKWalMartCartGuy]

Well cannot comment about other european countries but as tsar said thats not true in Finland, mass transit "works" only in few largest cities.
If you live in major city and work in centre using bus will atleast double traveltime, if you work somewhere else then triple or so. Due to financial problems i had to sell my car and time to travel tripled, i live in one of largest cities
And if you live in smaller city then mass transit is basically for scooltransit only.
My childhood home is in much smaller city and you can go in city centre in 8/9am and return 2/3pm (if you want walk 2 miles then you can return in 5pm too).
So in finland car is necessary to most of population.
Wikipedia tells that population density in finland is 40/sq mi and in USA its 80/sq mi

it's 1.09/sq mi in alaska

I get customers occaisionally who will come in and spend a couple grand, then mention they have a 140 mile drive by truck, then another 40 by snowmobile, just to get home. the only public transportation we have is city buses in a few cities(it might just be Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks)

I like snowmobiling, but I'm glad I do it purely for recreation

[crazylegs]

(more tax than actual fuel cost now).

Has been for a while, we pay around 30p/litre for the actual petrol then we pay excise duty and VAT on top of that!

[TNT]

Now that I can afford to buy a car, I'm too cheap to pay high gas prices.

But what does it matter? I live three blocks from work. Within those three blocks, there's two convenience stores, a hair cutting place, a pizzeria and other restaurants, and a farmers market. A few blocks more and there's a drugstore and full scale grocery store. Even our minor league baseball stadium isn't a far walk.

And there's a bus stop practically at my front door.

Those are the reasons I don't move, as much as I'd like to. I don't have to rely on anybody for rides.

[Andara Bledin]

it's 1.09/sq mi in alaska

I get customers occaisionally who will come in and spend a couple grand, then mention they have a 140 mile drive by truck, then another 40 by snowmobile, just to get home. the only public transportation we have is city buses in a few cities(it might just be Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks)

I like snowmobiling, but I'm glad I do it purely for recreation

One of the people in my WoW guild lives on the side of a mountain in Colorado. The nearest anything is about 40 miles away, and that place has a population of 50.

He owns his own business as a welder, but he still has problems getting to his shop when the weather's bad. He has a problem with finding people to work for him because they don't want to travel partway up the mountain to his shop.

^-.-^

[edible_hat]

We were ridiculously busy today. Some idiot who has no idea what he's talking about went on the radio and said the oil companies are planning to put the price up at midnight tonight and keep it high until after Easter. So all the sheeple came out to fill up.

My prediction based on past observances - the price will drop another 2-3 cents in th next couple of days then go up around 15-20 cents on Wednesday afternoon (then slowly drop 14-19 cents over the following week)

[Boochan]

We were ridiculously busy today. Some idiot who has no idea what he's talking about went on the radio and said the oil companies are planning to put the price up at midnight tonight and keep it high until after Easter. So all the sheeple came out to fill up.

My prediction based on past observances - the price will drop another 2-3 cents in th next couple of days then go up around 15-20 cents on Wednesday afternoon (then slowly drop 14-19 cents over the following week)

For some reason here over west in Perth our cycles are vastly different.. though because of how the media is we get a lot of eastern states centric press coming through ACA/TT, even though our local fuel climate (if you didn't know edible_hat WA petrol stations are only allowed to change their prices once a day at 6am, and have to publish them the previous afternoon) is vastly different, and price spikes across the board never ever seem to happen (normally its just BP or Caltex, another brand or two might follow suit, but thats it) even during holiday periods every suburb will generally have a station with reasonably cheap fuel in comparison to the others in the area. People still panic though mind you.

[Jbball]

My wife and I drive a 94 Sable and 98 Sebring (no car payments) and gas is still kicking our ass. I too, am tired of this. I'm sure it's just the war that's pushing the prices and money hung refiners/producers.

[daleduke17]

(if you didn't know edible_hat WA petrol stations are only allowed to change their prices once a day at 6am, and have to publish them the previous afternoon)

That would be a great idea for the United States to do, but, it would cause severe chaos every afternoon when the prices come out as everyone would head to the stations on their way home. :-/

But, I'm all for it.