[Gas Prices] Have you changed your work commute?

I just dumped $40 @ $3.32/gallon into my tank and the sucker still wasn't full. Gah!

It costs me about $77 a month for my staff parking pass at work. That, coupled with high gas prices, has forced me to change my approach for getting to work and minimizing use of my car.

1) I canceled my parking pass
2) I joined the university Pedal Club which gives me a free 10-day staff parking pass for the quarter as long as I bike in 3 days out of the week.
3) If I decide to drive to work, I'll come in later in the day so I can leave later and not be stuck in traffic wasting gas. Or start early and leave early.

I'm pretty sure the gas crunch is being felt all over the nation. Have you made any changes because of it?

I haven't made any drastic changes yet, but I commute ~8 miles roundtrip via motorcycle a day. I am watching my out of town trips tho.

I read an article today that stated that the rise in cost had gasoline sales down 0.6 % at a time when it usually increases 1.5%. "Experts" don't expect that to last though, but said if it did it could bring prices down.

I drive a company vehicle for work, and they pay for the gas. I've tried to make things more of a route than usual, and am letting lesser priority service calls build up and making that a route as well. Here, I paid $2.90 for regular the other day. The truck gas mileage is horrid in the city, and is not outstanding on the highway either. Tank is 38 gallons. I fill up at least twice a week, even with the changes I mentioned.

My new car is no gas miser either, but I'm driving my personal vehicle more than I drove the one it replaced. A tank still lasts a good long while, as compared to work driving it's a bunch of short drives, for the most part. Wanna bet oil companies post record profits this year?

Maybe I should have followed that "Alternate Fuel And EV..." thread a bit closer before purchasing a gasoline powered vehicle? I do love my car, but the pain at the pump thing is only going to get worse. Once they get used to getting that amount, they are not going to go much below it. And if I understand correctly, the prices we have here in the U.S. are cheap compared to Europe and some other parts of the world.

VWTim said:

I haven't made any drastic changes yet, but I commute ~8 miles roundtrip via motorcycle a day. I am watching my out of town trips tho.

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Motorcycle *sigh* as much as I realllly want one, I'm a bit concerned for my safety on these busy San Diego freeways. I wouldn't even consider it in Los Angeles.

Absolutely planning my trips around town differently now!! May have to switch vehicles with the wife (she works closer to home and has a 4 cylinder vs. my 8).

I haven't made any changes yet, but I've been thinking about getting a scooter.
Maybe one of these...



Could drive to work for a week on 1 gallon of gas.

Nope. Been riding the bus for many years. Eliminates traffic, parkinging fees, fuel costs, etc.
Bus pass=$10 a month.

im also concerned about the price to heat my home too.

trips just around the area will be effected and going out of town will hurt too. motorcycles dont get too much riding time im my area either.

Not much I can do to change it with very little convenient public transport in this area. It's been booming here for the last thirty years and the 'burbs have really spread. I feel for the folks getting new homes twenty miles or more from their work. I used to be closer (7 mi.) and could bike in a pinch, but now it's 15 miles. Bad timing. I could stop running around at lunch looking for flashlights. Nah.

Geoff

I've generally organized my work and living situations to avoid long commutes. I had an assignment about 50 miles from home and instead of commuting, I rented a cheap room a few minutes from the site, and stayed there most weeknights. Before that, I had a longer term job about 5 miles away, and I moved across town to 1/2 mile from the office so I could walk to work. I'm spending way more on parking and car insurance than I am on gas. I really should get rid of the car.

I generally fill up about once a month. My work commute is by bike and it's only a couple miles. I ride my bike all over the place, which saves my car quite a bit. It's an 03, with only 27k miles on it.

Bah, that's nothing. I'd be happy if I only had to pay that kinda money for gas. Take a trip to Sweden sometime and experience some real pain...

If I've done my calculations correctly our prices translate to $6.1/gallon

Robban said:

If I've done my calculations correctly our prices translate to $6.1/gallon

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I've been driving my diesel trucks a lot more and putting B99 in the tank. No, biodiesel isn't cheaper, nor do I get better mpg vs. my gas powered cars, but the money I spend on biodiesel stays in this country. I'm starting to see that as very important.

Cheers. :buddies:

Have you changed your work commute?

Yes... :nana:I moved to Gulf :nana:

sadly though, water cost's more than Gas ....

ViReN said:

Have you changed your work commute?

Yes... :nana:I moved to Gulf :nana:

sadly though, water cost's more than Gas ....

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Let's not forget ink for printers. They run $38 for something like 8 fl oz. That's $608/gallon (a big deal when doing photographic prints, let me tell you!)

I am going to try to bike to work more. It's 26km one way so it's also great for a workout as well. Depending on the wind direction, it usually takes me around 50 minutes (mountain bike) so it's also a good time to clear the head of work issues.

Check out RetroBikes.Com for interesting around the corner/town drives.

Anyhou, in the news here, there's this individual that works at Cisco Systems(?), and he commutes 3 and a half hours each way (that's 7 hours a day) to and from work! He's been awarded like an employee of the month. One of the rewards was gas money. :huh:

I'm having trouble understaning the hoopla about this.

I did some research and found a couple of interesting facts.

First, gas is 12% cheaper than it was last summer. Why wasn't CNN running stories about people pawning their watches for gas then? Why weren't folks putting their cars away and taking the bus then?

Further, I looked at Median Income vs. Gas price and found the results below (these are actual prices, not constant dollars):

Year Median Income Gas/Gal % of income for 1000 gal
1970 $8,734 $0.36 0.04%
1980 $17,710 $1.25 0.07%
1990 $29,950 $1.16 0.04%
2000 $40,100 $1.17 0.03%
2006 $45,200 $2.76 0.06%

So, gas is not as "expensive" today as it was in 1980. Plus, in 1980 average gas milage was 30-40% poorer than today, so the actual cost of commuting in 1980 was considerably higher than today. WIth gas milage what it was in 1970, it was also similar to 2006.

What jumps out at me is that throughout the decade of the '90s, gasoline price was roughly constant, while income rose by 33%.

So what I think is that gasoline today is not terribly expensive as a factor of income. I believe what has happened is that people became conditioned with a constant price throughout the 90s so that when it jumped up, it FELT much worse than it really is.

People (me too) are complaining that it costs $60 to fill their tank. Yet, I'm driving a $35,000 car. When I began driving in the '70s, it cost $12 to fill my $5,000 car. Seems like car prices have escalated much more than fuel!

Also, if you look at the prices and just say that 0.04% is what it "should" be, that equates to a price of $1.91...which is what gas was (here anyway) about 2 months ago. I heard an economist predict $2 gas by summer, so that's pretty much "in line" with history.

So, yes gas has had some wild swings in price, but for a lot of the last 2 years it's been only slightly higher than "normal", plus it's not as expensive as it was in 1980.

There you go again with the facts...

Oil is $75 or so a barrel on the spot market. It hit something in the mid $90's a barrel (inflation adjusted) back in 1974.

Yes, oil/fuel is high. But, right now, the shortages (in the US east coast) have less to do with hard to get oil (vs. the 1974 oil embargo) and more to do with the changes in law (again) with regard to Oxygenated Gas additives. The additive was MTBE (which is destroying our environment due to ground water contamination from leaking tanks/plumbing) to new shortages/high-prices of Ethanol (with lower fuel mileage and who knows what co-contamination problems that may or may not bring) and the custom gasoline blends (ostensibly to reduce air pollution) that prevent each region from covering local spot shortages.

Trust the government to find new ways of screwing up our lives...

-Bill