Many Americans are cutting back on everyday expenses as gas prices soar due to President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, now approaching the 10-week mark. About 44 percent of Americans said they’re driving less due to high gas prices, while 42 percent said they’ve slashed household expenses, according to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll. In addition, the poll revealed that 34 percent have altered travel or vacation plans. Americans are changing their behaviors as national average gas prices hit $4.43 per gallon Saturday, according to the AAA motor club. This time last year, the national average was just $3.15 per gallon. Patrick de Haan, a petroleum analyst for GasBuddy, said Saturday’s average price marked a sobering new record. “The national average price of gasoline has never been higher on the second day in May than it is today,” he wrote on X.
Cutting the motor vehicles out entirely is such an insanely massive savings.
Yes, but realistically most Americans do not live in a place where that is possible.
Doubt.
Well doubt all you want buy it’s true. That’s not hard information to learn if you put in the absolute minimum effort by the way.
I have put more far more than minimum effort into living as car-free as possible. What I have learned is that, no, it is not easy in the US. But it is possible, virtually everyone I’ve seen say that it’s impossible have really just not even bothered trying. Changing habits is hard, and this capitalistic hellscape makes everything that much harder, but no amount of excuses is going to bring gas prices down. Every cent spent on motor vehicles only goes to the lobbyists and city planners who make this paved deterraforming project that much more intractable.
your doubt is incorrect. heck i see a lot of people walking well over the mile to the local grocery store- more than ever. america is not public transportation friendly.
A mile is not a lot.
well over means well over. and that’s each way. and for some folks 2000 feet is a lot let alone 5280.
Cars are not the only form of transportation with accessibility in mind.
But what there is far far more of is people whose health is in dangerous territory, in part, because they are too sedentary, which is something owed in large part to the advent of industrialism including the rise of motor vehicle transportation.
If you never bike, 5280 ft feels like a lot. If you bike at least 3 days a week for even just two weeks, 5280 ft is already not even a warm up.
so your solution to the current problem, caused by capitalism, is (and let me make sure I understand this) - to convince people to exercise more.
the exercise thing solves other issues, sure. but the problem here is not working class people and bootstraps. it’s an entire subspecies of human, numbering in the thousands, that are monsters.
Oh of course, if we just magically got rid of about a thousand people, everything would be better. Wow, great problem solving. Totally not a completely useless comment.
My brother drives for almost 2 hours to get to his job. And it is not that uncommon
That’s a really dumb thing for your brother to do.
It’s a well paying job with good bennifits. Not sure what else to tell you.
I live in the SF Bay Area which is one of the better places in the US for public transportation and it still sucks here. It’s a 15 minute walk to Caltrain from my house but if I wanted to go to work via public transportation (which is Southeast from me) I’d have to go North about 30 minutes on Caltrain to the Millbrae station and transfer to BART, continue going North through San Francisco, across the Bay to Oakland, then finally South to work, then walk another 40 minutes or so. Google says it would take over 2.5 hours. No, there aren’t any convenient busses. Driving takes 30-40 minutes and they have EV charging at work. It’s a no-brainer in my case.
Sounds like you need a job closer to home, or a home closer to job.
I love the city I live in and I love my job (so far). I’m going to think about this for a while, I’m hoping my current place is my last rental, we’ll see.
If I could figure out how to do that I would. My daily commute is 1 hour 😭
In the same way that using degoogled Android usually requires you to get a different compatible phone, and loss of certain apps requires you to live your life a bit differently; the car-free lifestyle also take some pre-planning, and sometimes large changes in your life.
If you don’t think it’s worth it, that’s your choice. But car-centric lifestyles will get increasingly hard to sustain.
You are not actually trying to compare fiddle fucking with your phone for a few hours to be just as easy to just giving up a car. I Wana see you ride the bus with a weeks groceries for a family of 5.
Don’t do groceries once a week, live in walking distance of a small grocer. But that requires them to exist, and mega corps are killing them all.
I didn’t say it was as easy. I was illustrating that there are parallels - they are both things that you need to plan your life around. If your job forces you to drive 60+ miles every day, you can interpret that as most people do, by saying that makes a car free lifestyle not feasible. Or you can recognize that wasting all that time and money on the road and your car is a fucking stupid thing to waste your life doing, and start using some of your free time to either start looking for a job closer to home, or a home closer to your job.
Oh, and I used to make 45 minute bike commutes to my 10 hour per day job in a rural small town. And still managed to consistently get groceries for a household of 5. You don’t know what’s doable unless you actually try.
There’s only so many remote jobs available, the entire service economy requires workers who often can’t afford to live near their jobs. So unless your “just restructure your entire life” plan includes a comprehensive guide to change the nation’s economy fuck off with that bootstrap shit.
Are you really finding jobs that pay so much better that it’s worth the insane costs of cars, their maintenance, insurance, gas and oil?
My annual costs fall well short of “insane” and certainly outweigh the time loss if I relied solely on public transit, not to mention the flexibility and social social life hits.
My city is literally a shrine to a car. The city planners designed it like a wheel.
Sounds like hell.