Thread: The price of gas?

Originally Posted by Wildtim

Its not the price, or the traffic. Its those dang tiny little cars that make the trip unenjoyable, you guys need some nice big SUV's to make road tripping fun
.

Haaahahah... well we'll also have to redo the cities then... a lot of cities where built in the 1600's .. or earlier..imagine parking a big SUV in a narrow street in Delft for instance...
haha.. I've seen them try.. a friend of mine did.. got out of his car lost balance and got realy wet

then again.. we dont need to travelt that far to get to another country.. It takes me 2 hours to get to antwerp, about 5 for Paris, 10 hours and I'm in the north of Italy (through germany will make the trip very quick).

Originally Posted by Bruno

In the weekend I filled up on diesel for 5.4 $ per gallon. That is the cheapest price I paid for diesel in a looooong time. 6 or 7 years I think. Regular gasoline is back to 6.5$ per gallon. And let me tell you, that is considered cheap here.

You don't know half how good you have it with the gas prices in the US. And now you also know why europeans do not have the 'road trip' phenomenon. With the traffic jams and the price of gas together, driving long distances is generally not enjoyable.

The vast majority of that cost is tax imposed by your government, but hey, you have to pay for the social programs somehow

Matt

Originally Posted by mlangstr

then again.. we dont need to travelt that far to get to another country.. It takes me 2 hours to get to antwerp, about 5 for Paris, 10 hours and I'm in the north of Italy (through germany will make the trip very quick).

I'm only an hour from Canada. But other than that
its more like 24 hours of straight driving to get to any other country.

10 hours whould get me from Kansas City to Nashville.

Originally Posted by mhailey

The vast majority of that cost is tax imposed by your government, but hey, you have to pay for the social programs somehow

Matt

Taxes is indeed the large part of it. But it's been like this in all european countries for a long time, regardless of which type of government a specific country has.
Tax from gas is not used for social programs though. Most of it is going into infrastructure works and traffic / transportation related stuff.

I think the reason gas is so pricey is that we, the people, agree to pay the price. Europeans typically don't need to drive long distances (compared to americans) so to us, 7$ per gallon does not prevent anyone from commuting to work.

But you are right that some things are taxed to pay for social programs. One of those things are cigarettes. Currently a pack of 20 costs 4 or 5 euros. The price is upped anually, supposedly to incentivise people to stop smoking. But most people know this is rubbish. If you want people to stop smoking, make them thrice the price in one jump. Then people will stop. Adding 10% to the price is just a case of slowly boiling the frog: as long as you don't turn up the heat too suddenly, the frog will stay where it is.

Originally Posted by Wildtim

Its not the price, or the traffic. Its those dang tiny little cars that make the trip unenjoyable, you guys need some nice big SUV's to make road tripping fun.

My wife and I did a 3 week road trip in the US, and it was fun. Partially because of the big car, but also because your roads are long enough so that you can actually drive, instead of having to stop for traffic lights every 5 minutes
what was also nice was that everyone speaks english, whereas here you'd have to speak 5 different languages if you wanted to cover the same area.

Originally Posted by Wildtim

I'm just glad that the price has come down enough to give a little relief to all those people who have to commute for work. With my old job $3.50 a gallon made it cheaper for me to call in sick than drive in to work. Those are the people I feel for. You can't just switch jobs around here either with unemployment at 10% during the Christmas shopping season when most stores have hired temp help.

I don't know where you live but I've heard from friends that this can indeed be a problem, especially if you work in one of the tech areas like silicon valley, seattle, austin, ...

It's the same in London, Paris, Cannes, Brussels, ... but most major cities have excellent public transport going to and from them. As long as your destination is fairly large, you'll get a decent connection. If not, then you are smurfed.
Imo, one of the things preventing public transportation in the US is that the US is so freaking big, with so much distance between different places. Europe is very densely populated, so transport is much more efficient from a cost / person perspective.

Well, we Americans love our elbow room...it's just a fact. My new job requires an hour commute (60 miles one way). Thankfully gas around here is down to $1.49/gallon and I only have to go out there about once a week

This morning on MSNBC they are talking and predicting for gas prices to hit the $1.00 at the pump. As early as beginning 2009.

Wow. If gas goes down to $1 per gallon it will feel like a trip back in time. I wish I had a big storage tank.