Cities With The Worst Pain At The Pump

[marmar]

from Forbes, via Yahoo!:



Cities With The Worst Pain At The Pump
By Matt Woolsey, Forbes.com
May 13th, 2008


Gas prices in Texas are among the cheapest nationwide, but that doesn't mean commuting by car there is light on the wallet.

Indeed, though the cost of gasoline does matter, other factors, including distance, congestion, carpooling rates and use of public transit also play important roles.

Those living in Houston and its outlying suburbs know this. By these measures, the metro ranks as the nation's ninth most affected by rising gas prices, even though the average driver pays a relatively cheap $3.49 a gallon (as of May 1). Why? Ninety-five percent of residents drive a car to work. What's more, sprawl and congestion collude to increase driving times, and clogged highways greatly cut fuel efficiency.

But that's not nearly as bad as California's "Inland Empire" of Riverside and San Bernadino, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Chicago or Miami, where prices, traffic and commuting patterns really pack a wallop when it comes to time to fill up. Others feeling the pinch: Birmingham, Ala., Los Angeles, Raleigh, N.C. and Sacramento, Calif.

Behind The Numbers

To arrive at this list, Forbes.com took the country's 50 largest metro areas and looked at congestion, fuel costs, use of mass transit and carpools and commuting distances to determine which were the most affected by rising gasoline prices and calculate how much commuters pay each day to get to and from work. All fuel costs reflect May 1 prices.

Using the Environmental Protection Agency's fuel-efficiency curve, we first adjusted gas prices for traffic by calculating what portion of the average commute is driven at maximum fuel efficiency.

"When we're going between 50 and 60 miles an hour, we're burning 23 miles per gallon, but as you drop down to, say, 20 miles per hour, that number is more like 16 miles per gallon," says David Schrank, a research engineer at the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI). "As you get more and more stop-and-go--with the emphasis on the stop--you start … going nowhere and burning gas." .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://promo.realestate.yahoo.com/cities-with-the-worst-pain-at-the-pump.html

[Snarkoleptic]

1. Saw $3.92/gal for 87 and $4.03 for 93 at Costco in NW Chicago today.

[barbtries]

4. tell me about it

may 1 was a lifetime ago. the last time i bought gas - two days ago - it was 3.75/gal. the time before that, it was 3.62/gal. the time before that, 3.55 i think it was.

i drove from CA to NC in early Oct and was scandalized that i had to pay over $2.50/gal.

i would be hard hit there or here according to what i read, going from los angeles to raleigh. regardless i am disgusted.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

2. I've read that if you buy gas very early in the morning when it's cooler

that the gasoline is more concentrated and dense and you get more bang for the buck, as opposed to buying it when it gets real hot outside and the gas expands. I don't if that's true or whether the temperature of the gas underneath the pumps in the storage tanks is all that much affected by outside temperature. Anyone else heard of this?

[opihimoimoi]

3. Those Pubs on the lower econ level must be fuming every fillup. Especially if it means not traveling

to grammas or a fishing trip....

"Thanks a lot Bush"