Comments (23)

1. Here in Louisville, gas is around $3.85 and diesel is about $4.44. Those places may be expensive, but I bet they have ten times better public transit. I know Germany in particular has a really nice train system and Berlin has an amazing underground.

   posted by Jenny on 5-20-2008 at 1:46 pm

2. I’m in Stockton, CA and gas is hovering just below $4.00. When I started driving (and I’m going to show my age here) gas was 25 cents a gallon. My car only had a 4 gallon tank but it got 50 miles to the gallon. Those were the days!

   posted by Judy on 5-20-2008 at 2:21 pm

3. Unfortunately this country was build around the premise of the automobile, especially the west.

   posted by Ariel on 5-20-2008 at 2:22 pm

4. The lowest I remember gas was $0.739, at a gas station in NW Houston, in 1998 or 1999.

   posted by markmier on 5-20-2008 at 2:25 pm

5. Is that per liter? or gallon?

   posted by Mariner on 5-20-2008 at 2:30 pm

6. I live in Chicago and just paid $4.21 for gas. Besides for our country having horrible public transportation compared to europe – europe has a min. MPG (or KPL) that car manufactures must make cars reach and it is quite high, something like 40 MPG or higher.

   posted by k8o on 5-20-2008 at 2:45 pm

7. Comparisons like this don’t tell the whole story. Yes, our gas prices look much lower than the prices in other countries, but the prices in other countries are inflated because of higher gas taxes. If we had the kind of taxes they have, our prices would probably be a lot more similar.

   posted by ts on 5-20-2008 at 2:49 pm

8. Judy, that really doesn’t necessarily show your age. I’m only 24 and gas was $0.98 the week I started driving…

   posted by Bethany on 5-20-2008 at 3:02 pm

9. Meh. We’re paying $1.51/litre in Canada, do the math and it’s more than the US. I’m on the border, and drive across to get gas. I actually save money that way, and I make it worth my while by getting groceries at Tops, which is way cheaper than food here.

   posted by Amanda on 5-20-2008 at 3:36 pm

10. I agree with Jenny. Europeans do far less driving than Americans. For many Europeans, driving is a luxury, but for many Americans, it is a necessity. Some may argue that the USA is vastly larger than many European countries, so the infrastructure of a nationwide public transportation system would be huge and unwieldy. So what? Maybe it’s worth a shot….

    posted by Amy on 5-20-2008 at 3:51 pm

11. Amanda, where do you live that you shop at Tops? Niagara Falls area?

    as far as gas prices go, America has the cheapest gas prices in the world – not including countries whose governments subsidize their gas

    :)

    posted by Clotho on 5-20-2008 at 3:52 pm

12. The thing is, they don’t really NEED all the gas in those countries. With healthy public transportation and square mileage probably less than our entire country combined, cars aren’t as useful. So I believe we DO have a reason to complain.

    posted by Veronica on 5-20-2008 at 3:57 pm

13. While I do not like the increase in gas, we (USA) are still relatively cheaper than other countries.

    I agree that much of the difference is in the fact that, generally, those others have much higher taxes they use to build extensive and reliable mass transit systems. What do we have here? NY Subway, Chicago L, and the Detroit mugger, uh, I mean, People Mover. I wouldn’t call those extensive. And some are not so reliable.

    However, we still have much to complain about. For example, if you said that the price of gas increased $3 per gallon the US and the UK, the relative change is much greater for us than other countries. To illustrate,
    • the US went from, say $1 to $4 — that is a 300% increase!
    • the UK would have gone from about $5 to $8 per gallon — only a 60% increase.

    Second, the fact that Americans drive much more than our European counterparts (longer commutes, distance to stores, etc) only exacerbates our problem.

    posted by Brian on 5-20-2008 at 4:23 pm

14. Amy, I would love to hear your suggestion for public transportation in especially rural areas. How do you make it affordable, and for that matter, practical?

    I understand why some people want to go universal in transportation, but I sometimes wonder if they really think it through. How do you get frozen groceries home on a bus that has to make a dozen stops before you are in walking distance of home? If you have a long commute, what time do you need to be at the local stop so you can get to work on time? How many times do you change buses/trains to get to where you need to go? How many people have to be hired and how many new transit vehicles have to be built? What happens to the old infrastructure of road and rail? How do the initial costs impact everything? How is this sustained, and how difficult is it to integrate new technologies?

    Gas prices have gotten high, and concern over the possibility of “climate change” has people even more on edge. But seriously, could we even begin such a process? Until such questions, and more, are answered, I think it is a fool’s errand to start talking national public transportation in the US.

    posted by CR UVa on 5-20-2008 at 4:36 pm

15. I live in the UK and would just like to say that where I live, the public transport system is abysmal… one train every hour up until 8pm, and no buses. AND it’s expensive! Driving IS a necessity in many, many parts of Europe. I am learning to drive now but I’m not quite sure why cos I will never be able to afford the petrol and road taxes.

    posted by Nikki on 5-20-2008 at 5:07 pm

16. Ah yes, the solution to everything – public “something”. There are a lot of reasons to not be sold on the automobile but the one thing it does provide is freedom. Of course that freedom comes at a price – around $4 a gallon – but then again the cliché is still true… freedom isn’t free. Public transportation takes you where the people are… it’s nice to know that we still have the opportunity to go places where people aren’t.

    posted by Tom on 5-20-2008 at 10:10 pm

17. They seemed to have left New Zealand off the list. Petrol here is about $2/litre (approx $8/gallon).

    I personally do not have a car, because I walk or take the excellent bus system everywhere. Not all of our cities have a good public transportation system, though. LOTS of smaller cars and scooters though.

    As with any commodity, demand dictates price. If fewer people drove (or more drove smaller cars etc), therefore using less gas, the price would go down. Simple economics, really.

    posted by Dawn on 5-21-2008 at 2:32 am

18. It’s less that the prices are significantly lower than the other industrialized countries (I actually thought the gas in the US is subsidized) and more that our gas prices seem to fluctuate much more, as has already been pointed out. Oil companies have made huge profits this year, despite their claim about limited resources.

    Besides, we tend to have to drive much, much more around here. Back when I lived in Boston and DC, I didn’t drive more than 3,000 miles a year. I moved to Texas, and I’ve already put 10,000 miles on the car in six months. I have friends in the empty states (such as Wyoming) who have 2 hour commutes each way. While my friends in the UK (and I have a couple) have to pay quite a bit more in gas prices, their commutes tend to be shorter.

    There’s also cost of living to consider. The average American household makes about $31,000 a year. The average UK household makes 33,000 pounds a year, which is (guesstimating here) $55,000. People in those countries tend to make more and pay out more (think housing prices) because of it. That may sound mean, but consider this: in my dad’s home country (Bolivia), the minimum wage is $70/month. His family’s wealthy as hell down there, but when they move up here, they’re middle class (funny story: my cousin bought a ranch in the middle of nowhere, miscalculated how much building supplies in the US cost, and thus couldn’t afford a house to put on his land).

    And that is why I’m looking into getting a scooter. 90mpg sounds nice, doesn’t it?

    posted by Silva on 5-21-2008 at 2:47 am

19. It maybe so (and it is) that us europeans have good public transit (I live in Finland), but it´s not country wide. Public transit is very good in cities, but if you travel along the country in a greyhound manner, it´s unbelievable expensive. I´m paying 2,35$ now for a one litre of fuel. if you add to this, that US middle clas is much richer than european, your gas is still cheap!

    posted by henkka on 5-21-2008 at 6:52 am

20. I’m from Amsterdam, The Netherlands and the average gas price at this moment is $9.51/gallon.

    Whoever in the US thinks this isn’t as bad as it seems because of ‘less need’, ‘less square miles’(WTF?), ‘healthy public transportation’, ‘higher household income’ or ‘high taxes’, should do a little research.

    The only sustainable things I can say about these prices in Europe, is that they have been relatively high for decades (compared to US), which has slowly but steadily forced car manufacturers to offer more economical models, people to rethink their driving behaviour, city planners to adjust, etc.

    But still(!), the car is the nr 1 mode of transportation in ANY European economy, i.e. Europe as a whole.

    Me? I haven’t owned a car in 10 years, don’t miss it and I’m biking my way to retirement. :)

    posted by mindcaster on 5-21-2008 at 8:23 am

21. I believe this list to be a bit old. I read the original CNN/Money article, and I think it came out about two weeks ago. And besides, when was the last time anyone saw gas as low as $3.45? I buy my gas in New Jersey, home of the cheapest gas in the nation, and 87 is around the $3.60’s.

    posted by Jim on 5-21-2008 at 9:04 am

22. California’s working on it! We’re FINALLY getting our high speed rail system – One that’s supposed to have express trains that will get us from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2 1/2 hours (normally a 6+ hour drive.)
    Granted, it probably won’t be finished for 10 years, but still, yay!

    posted by Leah on 5-21-2008 at 9:17 am

23. Here in NW Georgia the gov has been throwing around the idea of extending Marta from Atlanta to Chattanooga TN. If they do that, it will go along the interstate (I-75) and cut right through my town. I am not sure when they will start construction on it, but that will help alot with travel and the ever rising price at the pump.

    posted by QuinO on 5-21-2008 at 11:43 am

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