Gas Station as Ghost Town.....

[marmar]

.... I just stopped at the Speedway near my friend's house in Grand Blanc (about 50 minutes north of Detroit). I used to live near the station, and on a lovely spring Saturday afternoon like today, it would typically be hopping like an airport. But I guess that $3.97 pg regular on the marquee was like a scarlet letter - there was my car and one other.
I guess more people are enjoying the comforts of home rather than driving to the malls, movies and other diversionary destinations these days.

[Selatius]

1. Yeah, the mall, the movies, restaurants, gotta have a car to get there. Problem is...

that America never really invested much in mass transit. Few bus fleets, no bullet trains, and a decaying Amtrak railway system. The mass transit systems in Germany and France are phenomenal in comparison. They put us to shame. Over there, many people can get to the movies, the malls, and restaurants without owning a car. They simply take the bus or the train.

[reformedrethug]

2. and over there

things are much closer together, your comparing apples to oranges.

[martymar64]

4. Not much more cramped than our East Coast.

Not as much out west, but in the east, there's some sort of town about every 5 miles. Face it, the era of cheap gas is over forever and we need to evolve or go the way of the Easter Islanders.

[ColbertWatcher]

5. Apples and oranges...

...don't seem so far apart when you're going over 300 miles an hour.

The train pictured below is the V150 French TGV high-speed train, which broke the world speed record at 357 miles per hour (574.8 km/h).

It seems the French and the Japanese are in some kind of contest over who has the fastest train. The fastest Japanese train hit 361 miles an hour.

BTW, maglevs are amazing.

[Selatius]

7. Nope. You argue under the assumption that buses couldn't address that problem.

That is where your argument collapses.

[marmar]

3. Yep. Even though European cities are much more centralized than ours....

.... you can even get around in the 'burbs with mass transit in Europe. Lots of the small cities around Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam have trams and buses to connect with the Metros, RERs, S-bahns, U-bahns etc.

[KharmaTrain]

6. We've Been Tracking Delivery Dates...

The game lately in Pleasant Valley Sunday is to find the stations that have the "oldest" gas as those prices can be 10 cents cheaper than the stations with the "newer" gas...it's like playing whack-a-mole as sometimes the price someone saw in the morning isn't the same as it is in the afternoon.

Gas prices are just one reason keeping people closer to home...having less money to spend is the other. Last week I was in the local Best Buy...and was greeted by more salespeople than I could count...a far cry from the past where you had to all but wave money to get their attention...and then we were the only one in the checkout line...one other was also open...a far cry from the 6 or more that used to be going full-tilt on a Saturday. There were people in the store...but my son joked that most were just playing with the video games or "just looking".