petrol / gas prices
with what is currently going on with fuel prices.. ?6 a gallon (I'm metric so means nothing to me)
whe you started driving how much was petrol a litre ? 65-73p if I recall correctly.. thats 19 years ago
and what price would it go to before you stop using the car?
I mean I walk a lot at the moment, even though I do have a car.. but only use it to up / down the motorway 25-35 miles..
when I had no car for a while in London, to go see the mechanic was 1 hour bus ride.. in the car..15 minutes if that
whe you started driving how much was petrol a litre ? 65-73p if I recall correctly.. thats 19 years ago
and what price would it go to before you stop using the car?
I mean I walk a lot at the moment, even though I do have a car.. but only use it to up / down the motorway 25-35 miles..
when I had no car for a while in London, to go see the mechanic was 1 hour bus ride.. in the car..15 minutes if that
Post edited by fog on
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1 liter = 0.21996919 UK (Imperial) gallons
Sign of me getting old and boring that i'm now looking at cars to see the most economical ! Depressing filling up the car to full and its ?65 !
Either way its still better (and cheaper) than the crappy train service. All the governments talk about getting people out of their car and using more public transport, well get decent prices and make sure they run on time.
The year i worked in London and got the train/tube was a nightmare
Don't use the car much but I filled up this morning for the first time in a while at the local Asda as it's the cheapest around, definitely raised an eyebrow at the price of diesel..
I agree that it depends a lot on the car, mine's quite economical, I sometimes spend almost as little as half of what some of my mates spend in fuel for driving the same distances.
Right now I am paying at the cheapest tankstation available 65 eurocent.
At the highway it is 85 eurocent.
When I first came to the US 14yrs ago it was .97 cents a gallon.
Yes it's cheaper here but it's also a necessity (at least in Houston), public transport is very limited and you do a lot more mileage to get anywhere. It's 32 miles to my job for example, that's nothing to me now...in comparison to that and how my mindset changed, I remember a drive to Leeds was considered a 'long' trip when I lived in Manchester.
It's a bit over $3 a gallon here, was a little over $2 a year or so ago.
Was .92 cents a gallon 19 years ago when I first came over, and remember feeling that it was terribly expensive when I drove through Missouri where it was $1.12 a gallon (highway (gas-station) robbery!)
Don't have a car and feel fine without one. Use my bike during the non-snowy months and the buses if I need to go "far" within town. Am fortunate to live in a town where most everything is within walking distance (then again my definition of "walking distance" may differ from yours :razz: )
Plus, the horrors of morning rush hour with all the school kids cloggin up the lines, at times the tram arriving at my local station is so packed that I have no choice but to wait for the next one (or catch an alternative tram a bit farther away) unless I wanna feel like I'm in the Tokyo subway.
No surprise people don't warm up to the idea of public transport, it gets more unreliable each year yet the prices go up.
Was impressed at the subway in Madrid when I spent a few months there. Didn't get the particular monthly ticked but supposedly it cost only about 20 Euros (and no major problems with train schedules either as there was a new train like every 3 minutes or so). I used to get me a 10 ride ticket that was 6,40 Euros, so that was all I needed to pay to get to/from work in a 5 day working week. Hell, 64 cents per ride - I need to pay four times that for any ride further than 4 stops over here, fecking thieving scumbags.
That's kind of a relief to know it's not just this country. Quite surprised it's like this in Germany as we're forever hearing off the likes of Jeremy Clarkson about how super-efficient the Germans are at everything ;-)
For me to get from my house to the city centre (3 miles) it costs the full bus fare - ?1.70 the last time I looked. To get from the city centre to Birmingham City Centre (about 20+ miles) costs exactly the same. How incredibly fecking stupid is that? So on a Saturday, for me, the wife and two kids to go shopping on the bus and back it would cost just shy of a tenner. No chance, so we use the car.
Well, there isn't anything they (the Bank of England) can actually *do* about inflation, since the inflation isn't being caused by general "economic overheating" problems (that's when interest rates rise). Inflation recently has been caused by VAT and duty increases and by the increase in oil prices since we're pretty much at world peak production (and therefore, any growth means oil prices necessarily will rise).
It cost just under ?70 to fill up my car about a week and a half ago (and petrol has gone up again since then, it's currently ?1.34/litre here - well, ?1.339 a litre - I wish they made it illegal to advertise things in divisions of tenths of pennies).
It's quite clear that there is going to be a lot more two wheeled transport for me for now on, either motor/push bike. The motorcycle gets over twice the fuel economy than the car even when the wick is turned up, and is more fun. It's just this time of year with all the ice four wheels is best, because the car won't tip over on a bit of ice.
I dunno, the Madrid Metro is cheap (1 EUR per single journey, or there is a 9 EUR 10-journey ticket) and a *lot* more reliable than driving in that city. Also the Spanish intercity trains seem to have very good reliability, very fair prices and are *fast* (320 km/h on the Madrid-BCN AVE line for instance). Britain could learn a *lot* about how to do trains from the Spanish (whose reliability is second best in the world with only Japan ahead of them).
Aye that was a typo...I meant $3 not $4.
Going to buy myself a new (pedal) bike in the spring for trips <5 miles. But right now it sure is good to have the big warm metal car, even if it is costing me ?75 a month to fill.
Yes, I actually mentioned the Madrid one in my post (though I may have added that later on as an edit? Don't remember), I second what you say. Is it 9 EUR now for the 10-journey one? When I was there in 2007, it cost only 6.40 ... but 9 EUR is still a lot cheaper than the crap I get in my town. The "short-ride" ticket (4 stations or less) costs a whopping 1.60 EUR, ridiculous.
How are announcments in your places? We got these signs where the next couple of trains are listed, saying "Train X - in Y mins", the minutes count down to 2 after which it won't say "in 1 min" but "Immediately". To be fair, most of the time the tram will indeed arrive in a minute or so, but sometimes it can take 5 or more minutes - not exactly immediately, why even bother with a minute countdown if it doesn't work out? With a bit of bad luck, any announced train may actually just vanish from that list as if the tram had never been on the track, and often without any info on why that happened, leaving the customer puzzled and frustrated.
But there are also way too many "Wayne Kerr"s who dodge the train fare so the company which runs these services is always strapped for cash and cannot modernize or increase the number of trains running.
Well, so much for our super-efficiency, Vampyre. That's a thing of the past I'm afraid.
?75 is about an average week for me with the present prices.
Added to my insurance going up 30% this year despite not having any claims (10+ years no claims) and just getting stung for ?200 to get it through the MOT motoring is getting very expensive.
Might be time to start acting my age and get a family car but where's the fun in that.
Journeys over 5 miles, there is a bus every 10 mins to town... I went to Walsall & back last week and had no problems whatsoever... plus I got to sit & read on the trains :)
It would have to go up a lot for me to stop as (1) I have a very economical car (45mpg+ if you cane it about 55mpg if you do not and tis not slow but lets leave that) and (2) I don't actually use it that much at the moment.
When I worked elsewhere, I did look at public transport but it was over ?1 (possibly ?1.50 now or more as it was about 5 years ago when I looked) , and to get to work would of taken:
1. That bus ride then a 5 minute walk to another bus stop then another bus and a 5 minute walk or so to work
or
2. That bus ride and about a 20 to 30 minute walk
Was just not practical for me at all as I had a physically demanding job so the walk 'home' was not really sensible.
Still I must be showing my age, as I remember having my driving lessons and my dad bemoaning that petrol was going to be soon ?1 a gallon ( they didn't show the price in litres in those days...). He would be turning in his grave now to think it is nearly ?5.50 a gallon - no wonder they don't show the price in gallons any more...
I am sure most people remember the blockades of the fuel depots when the prices were too high around 2000 - at the time, garages were put through the media spotlight where they were seen as profiteering - charging a massive ?1 a litre in some places - if only they were still charging that now...
What I don't quite understand is why the petrol stations offer higher priced fuel which supposedly improves your mpg - even Tescos has joined in the band wagon, but charges 5p a litre more. Tesco and BP are the ones which spring to mind, who charge you over the odds for basically the type of fuel that maybe the petrol companies should be selling as a matter of course. Only Shell seems to sell similar fuel (Fuelsave ?) for the same price as normal unleaded anywhere else...
On the positive side, many many years ago, I drove past a BP garage somewhere down south which was celebrating its 50th anniversary - they were selling petrol at the same price they had sold it 50 years previously - the queues were massive, but what a boon for motorists then!
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if a petrol station is within 1-3 miles then the prices will normally be matched.
I have been walking to town to post things around here , due to the sour faces b**** in the local post office here. it's a 20 minute walk each way up a steep hill , so hopefully it will help with losing a bit of weight, but I doubt it. Also the fact in town they charge for parking (except sundays)
I do have to have a car, solely due to the fact I'm going 50 miles one or more times a week up the motorway for some of the year and the buses don't run and I can't carry the things on the bus (don't want to either)
I have a car, it's new , supposed to do 64-74 mpg.. and well I use the sat nav to give me a good idea of the cost of money I'm spending also.
people in 2000 with the blockages didn't have the other stuff to worry about that they do now.. more so thankful to have a job. I remember where I was when that was happening (how sad is that)
I do remember being happier years ago, but is that rose tinted glasses / the fact of change / old git . I dunno