The Cost of Oil.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

DC does have good public transport, but it's expensive as all hell.

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Indeed. I have a 20 minute subway commute to work, and most of that is funded by my subway subsidy (pretty much everyone gets a subsidy from the government).

[Boon 0]

I think Boston has probably the worst public transportation. Ever.

[CanadianChris 0]

I think Boston has probably the worst public transportation.  Ever.

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Closely correlated with the fact that they have the worst road system ever, I'm sure.

[SuperJerk 0]

Public transportation will never work in Kansas City. We pretty much all decided to live in decentralized sporadic clusters, thus making a sensible public transportation system completely impossible. Plus, the Missouri Department of Transportation has made it to where no one can get anywhere, ever, thanks to never-ending road work that never seems to actually fix a damn thing. Walk up to any Kansas Citian andd say the words "Paseo Bridge" and you're likely to get a steady stream of vulgarities so graphic Joe Pesci would ask you to tone it down.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Y2Jerk,

 

I think never ending road work is everywhere. I wish there could be a whole week where ALL THE ROADS WERE NOT HAVING WORK DONE~!

[CanadianChris 0]

I wish there could be a whole week where ALL THE ROADS WERE NOT HAVING WORK DONE~!

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We have that here in Canada. It's called winter.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

HOLY GOD IS SJ RIGHT.

 

I live in DC's suburb capital of festering, neverending roadwork, and I absolutely can't stand it. The worst part is, they seem to be making the roads worse. They're creating this massive interchange to enter the Capitol Beltway right in my backyard, and somehow, every addition seems to make it 10 times worse. They somehow managed to take a straight road and, in order to fit a giganto-ramp in the middle of it, made it an S curve that completes itself in the course of about twenty feet. WTF.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Holy shit yes, I hate the DC Freeway system!

[EricMM 0]

I have heard that there is road technology out there to make roads that can take more than one winter without developing potholes.

 

But the prices per mile of that kind of road is a lot more than the current stuff they're putting down.

 

I wonder how many people in American, if asked directly, would be in favor of much more expense to make roadwork a much rarer thing...

[Stephen Joseph 0]

When I had a car, YES~!

 

Now I don't give a flip

[SuperJerk 0]

Y2Jerk,

 

I think never ending road work is everywhere.  I wish there could be a whole week where ALL THE ROADS WERE NOT HAVING WORK DONE~!

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That's probably true, but its starting to seem like 80% of the time roads are closed, they're closed for no reason. I worked in Kansas until 3 months ago. When a KS road crew fixes a road, they actually fix it. When a MO road crew fixes a road, they're really just closing lanes down to fuck with you.

[Vampiro69 0]

Damn road work sucks. In North Dakota we had a stretch of 35 miles of I94 where it was one lane of traffic. That whole stretch there was a section the length of a semi trailer were they were laying oil. Men at Work my ass.

[SuperJerk 0]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9024768/site/newsweek/

 

How to Escape the Oil Trap

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are now awash in oil money, and no matter what the controls, some is surely getting to unsavory groups.

By Fareed Zakaria

Newsweek

 

Aug. 29 - Sept. 5, 2005 issue - If I could change one thing about American foreign policy, what would it be? The answer is easy, but it's not something most of us think of as foreign policy. I would adopt a serious national program geared toward energy efficiency and independence. Reducing our dependence on oil would be the single greatest multiplier of American power in the world. I leave it to economists to sort out what expensive oil does to America's growth and inflation prospects. What is less often noticed is how crippling this situation is for American foreign policy. "Everything we're trying to do in the world is made much more difficult in the current environment of rising oil prices," says Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World." Consider:

 

Terror. Over the last three decades, Islamic extremism and violence have been funded from two countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran, not coincidentally the world's first and second largest oil exporters. Both countries are now awash in money and, no matter what the controls, some of this cash is surely getting to unsavory groups and individuals.

 

Democracy. The centerpiece of Bush's foreign policy—encouraging democracy in the Middle East—could easily lose steam in a world of high-priced oil. Governments reform when they have to. But many Middle Eastern governments are likely to have easy access to huge surpluses for years, making it easier for them to avoid change. Saudi Arabia will probably have a budget surplus of more than $26 billion this year because the price of oil is so much higher than anticipated. That means it can keep the old ways going, bribing the Wahhabi imams, funding the Army and National Guard, spending freely on patronage programs. (And that would still leave plenty to fund dozens of new palaces and yachts.) Ditto for other corrupt, quasi-feudal oil states.

 

Iran. Tehran has launched a breathtakingly ambitious foreign policy, moving determinedly on a nuclear path, and is also making a bid for influence in neighboring Iraq. This is nothing less than an attempt to replace the United States as the dominant power in the region. And it will prove extremely difficult to counter—more so, given Tehran's current resources. Despite massive economic inefficiency and corruption, Iran today has built up foreign reserves of $29.87 billion.

 

Russia. A modern, Westernized Russia firmly anchored in Europe would mean peace and stability in the region. But a gush of oil revenues has strengthened the Kremlin's might, allowing Putin to consolidate power, defund his opponents, destroy competing centers of power and continue his disastrous and expensive war in Chechnya. And the "Russian model" appears to have taken hold in much of Central Asia.

 

Latin America. After two decades of political and economic progress in Latin America, we are watching a serious anti-American movement gain ground. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela—emboldened by his rising oil wealth—was the first in recent years to rebel against American influence, but similar sentiments are beginning to be heard in other countries, from Ecuador to Bolivia.

 

I could go on, from Central Asia to Nigeria. In almost every region, efforts to produce a more stable, peaceful and open world order are being compromised and complicated by high oil prices. And while America spends enormous time, money and effort dealing with the symptoms of this problem, we are actively fueling the cause.

 

Rising oil prices are the result of many different forces coming together. We have little control over some of them, like China's growth rate. But America remains the 800-pound gorilla of petroleum demand. In 2004, China consumed 6.5 million barrels of oil per day. The United States consumed 20.4 million barrels, and demand is rising. That is because of strong growth, but also because American cars—which guzzle the bulk of oil imports—are much less efficient than they used to be. This is the only area of the American economy in which we have become less energy-efficient than we were 20 years ago, and we are the only industrialized country to have slid backward in this way. There's one reason: SUVs. They made up 5 percent of the American fleet in 1990. They make up almost 54 percent today.

 

It's true that there is no silver bullet that will entirely solve America's energy problem, but there is one that goes a long way: more-efficient cars. If American cars averaged 40 miles per gallon, we would soon reduce consumption by 2 million to 3 million barrels of oil a day. That could translate into a sustained price drop of more than $20 a barrel. And getting cars to be that efficient is easy. For the most powerful study that explains how, read "Winning the Oil Endgame" by energy expert Amory Lovins (or go to oilendgame.com). I would start by raising fuel-efficiency standards, providing incentives for hybrids and making gasoline somewhat more expensive (yes, that means raising taxes). Of course, the energy bill recently passed by Congress does none of these things.

 

We don't need a Manhattan Project to find our way out of our current energy trap. The technologies already exist. But what we're searching for is perhaps even harder—political leadership and vision.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

i heart zakaria

[Jobber of the Week 0]

I wish there could be a whole week where ALL THE ROADS WERE NOT HAVING WORK DONE~!

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We have that here in Canada. It's called winter.

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Well, looking at your avatar/title, you better get used to non-winter all year long if you really want to live in this city. Not just in temps, but also in roads.

 

Highway I-95, particuarly the stretch that heads into the northwest corner of the valley from downtown, is under construction all the goddamn time. Driving back and forth on it, even just hours apart, is like driving on a completely different freeway every time you go on it. The project isn't even set to be done until late 2007, I think, but they're working on it constantly. There is either a genius or a total madman behind the wheel of this highway renovation.

 

One night, I headed home to find heavy equipment (as in tractors that drive around on heavy treads) covering the farthest left lane on either side of the road, sitting over the center divider. They were using these big tools to knock down the concrete center divider. One with a boom arm to either try and pick up the concrete and break it, or just swinging it back and forth and knocking it over. Shortly behind it, a similar vehicle with a large drill arm was grinding the pieces into smaller rubble. The next morning, what did I find? They rebuilt an entirely new concrete divider, half a lane over from where the last one was.

 

The freeway has been expanded, redirected, moved over, repainted, and diverted in so many different directions that in many stretches you'll find old lane marker paint streaking off in some random direction. Keep an eye out to make sure that nobody around you becomes so absent-minded that they mistake these old lane markers as current lane markers and drift into you.

 

Also, on city streets there's an incredible tendency to see entire lanes blockaded off with orange cones yet see nobody actually working on the street. This is a partly from the roadwork guys working late at night in the hottest times of the year, but sometimes cones will come and go and absolutely nothing happened for the duration they were sitting there.

 

A taxi driver told me the city has to keep so many orange cones out at one time to keep the company that supplies them happy. I don't know if that's true, but they place enough orange cones and barrels out that it may very well be.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Eh, I no longer have a car, so that stuff no longer bothers me. I bicycle everywhere...maybe I'll get a kymco scooter...

 

I like my now simpler life

[AndrewTS 0]

I think Boston has probably the worst public transportation.  Ever.

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I live in a podunk town in SW PA. We don't have "public transportation." We don't even have a taxi service.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Boston still has it worse.

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

Stupid Hurricane could knock out a good chunk of the US's oil refineries and the result could be gas prices going up more than a dollar within the next 2 weeks.

 

Time to stockpile!

[Vampiro69 0]

I say we just give Florida to Cuba as a gift. Florida is causing to much trouble for us. Hurricanes, people not understanding how to read a ballot, Terri Schiavo, Elian Gonzalez. Lets just cut our losses.

[SuperJerk 0]

Eh, I no longer have a car, so that stuff no longer bothers me.  I bicycle everywhere...maybe I'll get a kymco scooter...

 

I like my now simpler life

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I'm wishing I didn't live 20 miles from my job right now.

[the max 0]

I say we just give Florida to Cuba as a gift.  Florida is causing to much trouble for us.  Hurricanes, people not understanding how to read a ballot, Terri Schiavo, Elian Gonzalez.  Lets just cut our losses.

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OMG FU

[RepoMan 0]

Stupid Hurricane could knock out a good chunk of the US's oil refineries and the result could be gas prices going up more than a dollar within the next 2 weeks.

 

Time to stockpile!

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Is anyone else who saw "The Oil Storm" starting to freak out.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Yeah, florida sucks. Lets give Castro the old people

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

As long as we can keep the Cuban baseball players.

[Bruiser Chong 0]

Gas here went from $2.59 earlier in the day to $2.99. Once again, a bitch costs us all more money.

[Youth N Asia 0]

THREE FUCKING BUCKS A GALLON TODAY!

[Jobber of the Week 0]

$3.00 for regular?

 

Wow. Gas prices here are still holding on at $2.60 at the low end with a number of stations heading up to the $2.80-.90 range today.

 

I'll take this moment to remind everyone of this site: http://www.gasbuddy.com/

[Justice 0]

See, the coolest thing for me is that my dad gets free diesel from the pump at his work, plus my house (Sadly, not my dorm) is closest to the lowest gas prices in the state. So I guess I'm going pretty good in all this mess.

[Dr. Zaius 0]

You know, there really are some nice, roomy cars out there that get 30+ miles to the gallon.