I would say that the amount of money which us Europeans spend on petrol is about the same than the USAnians spend on gas.
Especially in the cities here you are much less dependant on a car than over the pond. The commute way to work is usually much shorter and the average mpg of the car fleet here is less than in the US. So I think with these adjusting factors the oils prices put the same hole in all our wallets.
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Originally Posted by tater
The light rail in LA is so cost ineffective that all the lower income riders could be given a new Prius every 5 years, and have all costs associated with operating it paid for, and LA would still save money. Japan's rail system is also a known problem in terms of cost.
Nice idea, but it needs to at least break even with fares including a subsidy no greater than that given to roads per seat-mile traveled.
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Do you have any statistics for that? I am really interested what pov the makers of this study have.
do they also regard the real vehicle operational costs? (repairs/tolls/taxes, etc)
And there is also the factor of costs which public transportation helps to avoid: Money lost through pollution and traffic jams (time, money and goods get wasted by jams)
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Originally Posted by Ducimus
The end result is the oil companies price gouging, whenever someone sneezes in the middle east, all the more painful.
And yeah, given their profits, i see no justification for the prices other then pure corporate GREED. I mean seriously, are they using Libya as their excuse this time? I'm not "buying" that excuse, not for one freaking minute.
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Hey, this is only "fair"!
When you had the storms in the Gulf of Mexico, our prices here went up too - though we import only a few drops of the oil which is produced there.
Germany gets about 10% of its oil from Libya, I wonder how much you get from there, I bet it's much less.