Just because a bike cannot be used sometimes due to the weather, it doesn't preclude using that form of transportation at other times.

Agreed, but also keep in mind that winter here constitutes the better part of 6 months and the spring is usually VERY wet and I would prefer to not get sick.

This is not an "all or nothing" discussion.

When you are already paying a car payment and insurance, the desire to just let the car sit there is pretty low.

There are times when I don't ride to work due to the weather, but most days I can, due to the "choice" I made regarding where I live.

See, that is just it. I cannot "choose" to be within biking distance to my office and actually save money. Real estate in Fredericton (in relative terms) is out of control. I would have a shoebox of a house and pay a TON more in electricity or oil. Remember that I have a Geothermal heatpump. So if I were to take your advice, I would just be trading one form of fossil fuel for another.

The "choice" "you" made about where to live may mean that a car is a "necessity", however, please remember that where you live is a choice.

A choice in that one has the opportunity to avoid making the one that would cost them more money!!!!

One of my wifes employees lives a 45 minute drive from the city. I personally think it is crazy but the ONLY way she could afford a house at the time was to get the one where she did.

Now before you start yanging about condos and apartments, let me fill you in on a few things. Fredericton is a university/government city. All of the apartment and condo owners conspire to provide barely enough supply of units and due to this, there is no such thing as a cheap apartment here. Condos basically start at $200,000 and as such are out of the CHOICE for MANY families in this city.

Those in the city that do live in strategic areas aren't selling either, so there is another CHOICE shot to hell. And, on top of that, the property tax in Freddy is SOOOO high compared to out of the city limits, that the sound financial decision is to live outside the city limits and that instantly screws one over on the public transit side of things.

Oh, and like someone else said, don't expect that the world should just all move to the golden horseshoe where all they would truly gain is smog and crime. Massive urbanization has just as many pitfalls as the opposite.

In the end, if there is anything to actually choose from, it is the lesser of two evils.

My wife and I both own cars, but most years only put 3-4000 km on them.
You might live two blocks from your work and drive everyday, so I don't see how the annual milage is any real indicator of vehicle use. Shorter trips also lead to greater polution output by the vehicle (cat doesn't have time to come up to full operating temp), so lots of short trips could actually pollute more than longer ones.

Not suggesting at all that you fit this scenario though.

The "choice" "you" made about where to live may mean that a car is a "necessity", however, please remember that where you live is a choice.
And what if the company you work for moves, or closes down, or you get laid off or fired, and your next job is 30KM away? Are you supposed to move everytime you get a new job? Or are supposed to turn down a good job until something more local turns up?

You make a choice. But, do not imply there was ZERO choice to make.

I'm either the luckiest person in the world, or I have made lifestyle choices that lead to my circumstances. Which is most likely? And why do I have these choices? Also blind stinking luck, or working my ass off to insure I did?

Most would say I made sacrifices they would be unwilling to make. That's choice. There was no gun to my head. There is no gun to anyone's head.

Nobody is trying to wrench the steering wheel out of your cold, dead hands. So relax.

But, I do ask everyone to consider whether they have some responsibility to conserve where possible. Make sure your next car has great mileage. Bike with the family to the park instead of driving there. Walk to pick up some milk. Switch off the lights when you leave the room. Push the theromostat up a few degrees in the daytime when you're not home. Use compact flourescents instead of incandescents.

Lots of little things EVERYONE can do. And some will save a good bit of coin too, in the long run. And maybe take the pressure of oil, natural gas, and by extension gasoline.

Or, you can bitch about the taxes, the Chinese, the Indians, and America foreign policy. Your choice. It's a free country.

:D

Gary

I am still amazed at all the huge SUVs roaring past me on the highway at 130 km/hr. I drive up to the pumps and see the last person filled up for almost $100!!??

Personally, I have slowed down to 100 km/hr on the highways, I coast to red lights, roll away slowly when they turn green and I am driving as little as possible.

As long as people continue to pay the prices they are charging and do nothing to conserve, the prices will continue to rise and I will continue to drive less and less.

You make a choice. But, do not imply there was ZERO choice to make.

I'm either the luckiest person in the world, or I have made lifestyle choices that lead to my circumstances. Which is most likely? And why do I have these choices? Also blind stinking luck, or working my ass off to insure I did?

Well, theologically, life itself is just a choice but people don't usually subscribe to the idea that suicide is a real choice. What I am getting at is that there are people that would prefer to not die from the athsma attacks that the Toronto air would cause them to have. Realistically, that changes from being a random choice to being a logical decision. Choice is NOT as arbatrary a process that you and 57 are trying to make it out to be. There are MANY variables to deal with and because of this the choices that people make WILL differ from what you two have decided to do.

Personally, there are days when I would love to live in an arcology ( A building in Sim City 2000) like what they want to build in Tokyo. I believe that it is the smartest way to build anything. However, there is no chance that the governments of the world are going to break their ties with big oil and conspire to build living and working environments that are so well blended that no one EVER needs a car or truck.

Or, you can bitch about the taxes, the Chinese, the Indians, and America foreign policy. Your choice. It's a free country.

I will only bitch about the universal problem of government corruption/inefficiencies and the lack of desire to legislate the use of smart technologies into the daily life of the population. Ex: Fuel cells, Geothermal heating and cooling, hybrid cars, wind power, ocean power, solar power, unified cities/towns/businesses into arcologies, etc...

When the population can't make proper decisions anymore, the government should be willing to step in and eliminate the truly wrong or greatly unproductive choices.

Oh and yes, random fate has a LOT to do with where you are today. You cannot control everything and therefore will have some things happen to you that you could not have avoided.

Gas prices soar above $1 (http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/national/2005/08/17/gas_prices_20050817.html)


Harper said Ottawa could also reduce its surtax on gasoline, introduced in the mid-1990s, as a deficit-fighting measure. Natural Resources Minister John Efford rejected the notion yesterday, saying it would do nothing to ease the pain at the pumps.


It would have absolutely no effect, and we want to maintain the adminstrative expense for the tax collection and gas stations. BOZO!

This is one of those taxes that are introduced for X and remain well after X is no longer an issue.

You know, like the income taxes we pay to cover the expenses of WW I :)

Seriously, there ought to be a directed taxation law. If parliament introduces a surtax for something specific, it can only go to that, and must be reduced or eliminated if it is no longer applicable.

Politicians are tax junkies.

Gary

How about they just remove GST from gas? It's legalized double taxation.

Oil was down today. We will see if the trend continues.

Harper said Ottawa could also reduce its surtax on gasoline, introduced in the mid-1990s, as a deficit-fighting measure.

Wow, finally something out of Harpers mouth that I agree with!

*oink* *flap* *oink* *flap*

Not that the high prices are hurting me too much. I'm one of them dang city dwellers who doesn't drive all that much. :p I tend to agree with 57's and dialog_gvf's opinions on people making choices. Among those choices for those of you not in the country side is to put pressure on your politicians to fund public transit better which will likely mean higher taxes to cover that. Take your pick. The days of cheap fuel are over.

Just to respond to a few previous posts for the sake of clarification and not to continue the argument.

1. My neighbour tells me I'm "lucky" to have air conditioning. Heck, I thought I just paid for it.

2. My relatives tell me I'm "lucky" to have the job I do. Heck, I thought it was because I worked hard at high school, university, interviewed like crazy and showed up for work for the last 40 years or so, every day, excepting days when I was truly sick (no sick days in almost 10 years), while also being a major contributor to company profits, while accepting significant travel time as part of my job.

3. People say I'm "lucky" to live where I do. Heck, I thought it was because I saved a lot of money not buying some things lots of people do and prepaying my mortgage at every chance, while searching for a house in the area I wanted and not buying a large home. I also rented a small home when I returned to Toronto to save some money, check out the neighbourhood and wait for the last real estate boom to be over, saving significant $ on the home and the renovation.

4. People say I'm "lucky" to work where I do. Well, I guess when I volunteered for the job of office manager, despite being far from the most senior employee, when it came time to chosing the various sites for our office at each major downsizing, had nothing to do with it, while negotiating with the US real estate section each time.

5. People say I'm "lucky" to be still working for my company, after all, in 1988 we had 20 employees in Toronto, about 15 in 1990, about 5 in 1993 and 1 in 1999. Yep, that was luck alright that I'm still there.

Although there's good and bad luck, I believe that MOST times you make your own luck and your own choices. NO ONE "forces you" to do anything.

Yes, you do luck into your genes, but what you do with them is just as important.

It's a good thing more people don't have genes like yours because then you wouldn't be so lucky.

95 cents in Ottawa today. I wonder if it will be near 90 by tonight.....it usually goes down during the day with late evening being the cheapest....:D

$1.12 here in NS, down from the usual $1.21. They had to enact an emergency clause to save us from our own gas price regulation.

Yup, we spend every day here bent over with our pants around our ankles.

Same here in NB....but we hold a bottle of KY in one hand... :o

You maritimers are so uninhibited.....

Danster, you should be conserving all petroleum-based products...:)

Danster, you should be conserving all petroleum-based products...:)
If he is using KY then he is. ;)

A few years back, when there was a glut of gasoline on the world market, a spokeswoman for a major oil firm was being interviewed on local TV. The reporter naively asked the Chevron rep, "When will we see cheaper prices at the pump seeing that oil dropped over $2.00 a barrel today?" The woman replied, "Oh, you won't see that reflected at the retail level for about three months as it has to work its way through the system."
My question is: How come if a barrel of oil goes up say a dollar, there's an immediate price jump of 20 cents per litre or more in the price we have to pay? I mean, this gas was paid for three months ago (according to the spokeswoman) when the price was somewhat cheaper.

Short answer? Because we are being gouged both by Big Oil and the government.

They can moan about "speculation" and world market prices and economic instability and try to confuse us with all their fancy charts and graphs. But with Exxon and other oil companies shattering their own profit records each quarter, it's a little hard to take.

Most of us balk and complain about the high prices while we fuel up the SUV for a leisurely Sunday drive. Fact is, they have lots of room to move the price up before people start re-mortgaging just to afford their gas.

Unfortunately, some experts are saying that the world economy won't start feeling the true impact of high oil prices until the price hits over $100 a barrel. Then we might see the same kind of price crash we saw in 1979 as the world economy entered a recession due to high oil costs.

I think the only gouging was a semi-conscious thought NOT to build a new refinery in over 30 years.

Take all the crude you want but at the end of the day when it hits North America it's gotta get refined.

To Otown47 and Jake,
Yes we do conserve petroleum based products. KY is more "Au naturel"...:o

Our gas has gone down today. It was 119.9 yesterday and now, it's 110.2-111.9 depending which station you go at.