Well living in London I don't use my car much. I use public transport to go to work, I use it to go to Highbury for games and if I'm out at the weekends I'm obviously not drinking and driving. Once you take out commuting, the car only gets used about three days a week on average.
I think that's what the direction should be: creating more clean, safe public transportation in America. Car to be used only for leisures for city dwellers.
Well, you just don't go very far in your car. You avoid trips altogether or combine them. For example my better half has just gone to the shops. It's a round trip of about 20 miles so she gets the weeks shopping at a time. When I bought my house it was definitely a consideration that my place of work was about 50 yards away from my front door. When I bought my present car, (a Renault Laguna estate like this one), http://www.renault.com/gb/produits/laguna2break.htm I checked it's fuel consumption would average at least 40mpg with the way I usually drive. My next car will be a diesel and I will try and get one that does over 50mpg for the same reason. In other words, you do the obvious stuff.
First, let me apologize for starting to get the thread off track. I didn't expect such a reaction (my naivete', I guess). I thought I was just making a quick joke. There is a lot more sensitivity out there than I realized. As to what he higher price of gas is doing here, I saw the other night (I think it was NBC News but I may not remember correctly) that it has pulled $60 billion out of other spending!! This seems high to me, but I don't have better figures to compare. I do know that this is a much smaller shock than the Arab oil embargo of the early 70's. Back then we were all so used to gas for $0.30 per gallon that the sudden jump to $0.50 per gallon was cataclysmic to the economy. It drove inflation to levels that we had never seen in he US. Inflation has not taken anywhere near that hard of a hit this time. One of the positive consequences then was a shift toward more energy efficiency. We have gradually drifted back away from this. As other posters have noted there are a lot more large vehicles on the road here than there were just a few years ago. I live in the city and lots of my neighbors have SUVs for no reason at all except they like the extra space and the feeling of power (for an entertaining read, check out how SUVs are marketed, it may make you think again about what it means to own one). DC has pretty good public transport, but it takes a lot of extra expense and hassle for commuters to get out of their cars. Another piece of this is that mass transit is not yet perceived as cost-effective versus driving your own car, because so many of the costs of driving are somewhat hidden on a day-to-day basis (expenses like car repairs, tires, etc). We generally think of the cost of operating our vehicle just as the cost of gas, but that is only the most visible part. I think one other thing that I haven't seen discussed on here is the preponderance of suburbs in America. Europe has suburbs but in general they are not as extensive or poorly planned as in the US. American suburbs are designed around the use of the car. Additionally, because they are relatively low population density (compared to the core city) it is difficult to design effective public transit. (BTW, I am a public transit user 3-4 times a week).
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driving less using public transport drive with many ppl in one car riding bikes/going by inline skates/feet/skiers (if you live in a mountain area) buying fuel efficient cars having more money if you buy bigger cars ;-) There is a big train system in every european country, plus flights are very cheap atm (20 € from Hanover/GER to Valencia/ESP? yes!) and than the distances in general are much smaller than in the US.
Er, are you sure you've clicked the 'Reply' button on the correct post? I was responding to a post asking how people in europe can survive with gas prices so high from verybdog - not you.
It's cheaper too. The bus costs me £7 per week to get to and from work. It would be a hell of a lot more in petrol and parking to drive to work, not to mention wear and tear on the car etc.
Here in italy the average is 1,187 €/liter normal 1,022 €/l diesel Different companies having slightly different prices. 20 oct. AGIP 1,179 0,0 1,008 0,0 API 1,187 -0,002 1,023 -0,002 ERG 1,187 0,0 1,020 0,0 ESSO 1,185 0,0 1,017 0,0 FINA 1,187 0,0 1,023 0,0 IP 1,185 0,0 1,021 0,0 Q8 1,189 0,0 1,021 0,0 SHELL 1,187 -0,001 1,023 -0,002 TAMOIL 1,187 -0,001 1,022 -0,002 Oristano, 12:25 Abbatte colonna distributore benzina e scappa: ricercato Dopo aver fatto il pieno di benzina si è scagliato con forza contro la colonnina del distributore e lo ha buttato giù. Poi è fuggito. L'inspiegabile episodio è avvenuto nella notte a Oristano. Sull'episodio è intervenuta la polizia di stato di Oristano, che ha provveduto a rimettere l'impianto in sicurezza. (cor) transl. After having filled the tank an unknown man threw himself against the pump pulling it down. Then he ran away. The inexplicable episode happened last night in Oristano (Sardinia). (...) being used to it we (europeans) know how to deal with high gas prizes (usually).
Bear in mind that a US gallon is smaller than an imperial gallon i.e. a us gallon is .8327 imperial gallon or 3.7851 litres and an imperial 4.54609 litres. So when someone in the US says they get 30mpg, that is 36mpg in the UK.