Chris Wright says ‘I don’t know’ when asked about lower cost of gas as average price soars to $4 a gallon in US
Chris Wright, the Trump administration’s energy secretary, acknowledged Sunday that it might not be until 2027 before US gas prices come back under $3 a gallon.
Asked by Jake Tapper, the CNN State of the Union host, when he thought “it’s realistic for Americans to expect the gas will go back to under $3 a gallon”, Wright replied: “I don’t know. That could happen later this year. That might not happen until next year.”
Compared to other developed nations, yes, but it still hits Americans very hard because cars are by no means a luxury in the vast majority of places and circumstances in America.
It’s not something you can just forego and be a few minutes late on a crowded tram or not be able to stop for coffee on the way; even in places with relatively good public transit intrastructure that aren’t the largest of the largest cities, it could be the difference between being there in 15 minutes and being there in two hours with no way back except a $30 cab ride because you miscalculated and missed the last (but still pretty early) bus by two minutes.
There is also scale at play. A one way 45 minute commute without traffic is far from u heard of in the US, and many of drive in one or 2 days as much as many other places will in a month in both time and sistsnce due to the reasons that you pointed out.
Some people just don’t understand how much slower the bus is. A trip from my house to my brother’s apartment downtown via a bus is a 3 hr trip with a connection at a hub and a half-mile walk.
I can jump in my car any time, and be there in 15-20 minutes.
If we can get that time down to maybe 40 minutes, then I might consider taking a bus, but until then, it just doesn’t work out.
Because we don’t fund public transit and more importantly, we don’t give them priority right of way. There is no reason a bus full of people should have to wait for a single person in their car to turn, merge, etc.
You‘re right. But it’s no different elsewhere. I lived in a village in Germany only 25 km (~15 miles) from a metropolitan area. There were literally 4 bus connections a day but on the other side the commute by car could add up to an hour if you had to go to the centre of that agglomeration.
I don’t think you understand: in the US, there would be zero connections to a village 15 miles outside a metro area. Some long-distance buses (Greyhounds) exist that, in a city with a bus system, may stop at the terminal, but these are normally stopping at Amtrak train stations that are few and far between along rail lines that are already exceedingly uncommon.
Four connections a day would be a godsend to most places in the US. When I gave a comparison, I was considering a commute from a suburb (i.e., directly attached to the rest of the city) to maybe halfway across a city of a few hundred thousand people.
When I said a difference of 0.25 and 2 hours, I was talking about a reasonably good transit system by US standards. You would have functionally no choice in your case; you’d have a dangerous five-hour walk into town through a rural area where people barely paying attention do 100 km/h down two-lane roads.