Pricey gas at Chevron poised to dip under $4 a gallon

I've been following the escapades of the price of gas at the Chevron at the corner of Colorado and Hill in Pasadena for almost two months. In late June, the cost of a gallon of regular gas cost as much as $4.739 in late June.

And now look at this: $4.019 as of an hour ago. And this particular Chevron is one of the more expensive gas stations around this part of the San Gabriel Valley.

The national average for a gallon of regular is down to $3.66, down from its record of $4.114 on July 17, according to AAA. The California average is now $3.93, a big dip from its record of $4.61 on June 19.

As you are well aware, there has been an onslaught of media stories over the summer that higher gas prices have resulted in people driving less. On Tuesday, I posted a pair of maps from the Sigalert website showing traffic speeds during the Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning commute, and from the look of things traffic was sailing along at 50 mph or better in most parts of Los Angeles County.

I asked readers if this could be true.

Six left comments. Four said their drives have recently been better. KateNonymous, a regular reader, suggested that the traffic speed map on The Times' website is often "hideously wrong." The map is provided, by the way, by Sigalert.com.

The sixth comment came from Chris S., who lives in the Netherlands. I thought his comment was the most interesting because he, like me, is skeptical that people will suddenly cease driving. He wrote:

I personally don't think gas prices affect traffic jams in the long term situation. In the Netherlands, we had gas prices 15 years ago which would be called astronomic in the United States, yet the number of traffic jams increased with 10%, year after year. A "normal" rush hour accumulates easily 200 miles of traffic jam on the peak moment, while over 300 miles is also not uncommon in our small country (barely larger than metropolitan Los Angeles). Remember gas prices have been hovering above 5 dollars already 10 years ago, and recently even hit 10 dollars a gallon. I remember when the gas price hit 2.5 guilders a liter ($5 a gallon) about 8 years ago, and everybody talked about how much the traffic jams would decrease. Now we know better than that. High gas prices might initially scare off commuters, but in the long term, people just adjust their spending budget to the higher gas prices.

--Steve Hymon

Photo: Steve Hymon / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[aullman]

Traffic congestion and high gas prices will continue to be a problem as long as people continue to commute long distances back and forth to work every day. The solution to these problems is to change the way people get to work, since commuters are the biggest consumers of oil.

The energy and traffic congestion problems could be solved over night if people were to start working from locations near where they live, rather than at some centralized office across town.

Remote Office Centers make it possible for most office workers to work remotely. A Remote Office Center leases individual offices, internet, and phone system to workers from different companies in shared centers located around the city and suburbs.

The best way to cut back on oil consumption and traffic congestion is for people/commuters to drive less miles. Remote Office Centers are a fairly new concept, but they can be found in most cities by doing a web search for "Remote Office Centers" in quotes.