GAS PRICES

[Juan_Bottom]

Anyone here read the book ANIMAL FARM? I am always amazed how everyone complains, but no one does anything about anything. Do you not know your own strength? There are like a 8 billion of us, and 11 of them. if we wanted cheap gas, we would take it...

[Hologram]

Anyone here read the book ANIMAL FARM? I am always amazed how everyone complains, but no one does anything about anything. Do you not know your own strength? There are like a 8 billion of us, and 11 of them. if we wanted cheap gas, we would take it...

Correction, between 6 and 7 billion, and the only people that are really complaining are Western countries, namely America, which puts it more around 400 million. Besides, under the republics of the west, people like to think that their office holders are going to do the jobs for them.

[Mr_Adams]

4.09
4.98


WOW!

[tzor]

It makes me so mad that we're wasting oil on getting to places Super Fast instead of spending in on stuff we need. Like, you know, plastic and computers.

Not quite. Actually in terms of gas guzzling waste we spend more gas on plenty of comfy - cozy seating and a good near trucker's view of the road. Back in the old days people used to lug their kids around in station wagons. The biggest difference between the old station and today's mini van can be the "captain's chairs" in the minivans.

Going slower would increase MPG, but the equivalent of a station wagon would get even more MPG increase.

[Nobunaga]

Anyone here read the book ANIMAL FARM? I am always amazed how everyone complains, but no one does anything about anything. Do you not know your own strength? There are like a 8 billion of us, and 11 of them. if we wanted cheap gas, we would take it...

Correction, between 6 and 7 billion, and the only people that are really complaining are Western countries, namely America, which puts it more around 400 million. Besides, under the republics of the west, people like to think that their office holders are going to do the jobs for them.

... Spent more than a decade in Japan, and one of the things I liked most was the efficiency and availability of mass transportation. You could go anywhere in the country on mass transit. In the US, unless you live in a large city and never plan to leave, you absolutely need a car. We don't have the options folks have in many other nations.

... Why is that? America just too damned big? Or is it "Big-Oil Conspiracy" related?

...

[Juan_Bottom]

I think it is the price that you pay for big government.

[Mr_Adams]

I think it is the price that you pay for big government.

which is why governament needs to be shrunk down to the size of a pea. the same size as the average politician's brain.

[tzor]

... Why is that? America just too damned big? Or is it "Big-Oil Conspiracy" related?

That's it, it's just too damned big.

But most importantly in Japan people are concentrated into urban areas. The US has a significant populaton in suburban and rural areas. Mass transit works wonders in small concentrated areas and among small concentrated areas, but the complexity of a system increases with the size of the area. Thus mass transportation becomes impractical in rural areas.

There was a time, long ago when every two bit city had their own trolley system. Most ripped them out in the 20th century because the automobile reduced the demand. In many small cities, the amount of effort required for construction of the infrastructure would cripple the city. Most of the cities that have the infrastructure are many decades old and most projects are for highway improvements. Boston's "Big Dig" for example was for cars, not trains.

There was also a tendency in Japan to go for the bleeding edge. No one wanted to touch mag lev in the US but Japan took up the chappenge with gusto. The most "innovative" mass transportation idea recently (and this is a decade old already) was an elevated line from the railroad to one of the airports. If that is true for the city that never sleeps, it must be even worse for all the other cities.

As for inter state train transport ... ironcially it is still cheaper to fly.

[Hologram]

... Why is that? America just too damned big? Or is it "Big-Oil Conspiracy" related?

That's it, it's just too damned big.

But most importantly in Japan people are concentrated into urban areas. The US has a significant populaton in suburban and rural areas. Mass transit works wonders in small concentrated areas and among small concentrated areas, but the complexity of a system increases with the size of the area. Thus mass transportation becomes impractical in rural areas.

There was a time, long ago when every two bit city had their own trolley system. Most ripped them out in the 20th century because the automobile reduced the demand. In many small cities, the amount of effort required for construction of the infrastructure would cripple the city. Most of the cities that have the infrastructure are many decades old and most projects are for highway improvements. Boston's "Big Dig" for example was for cars, not trains.

There was also a tendency in Japan to go for the bleeding edge. No one wanted to touch mag lev in the US but Japan took up the chappenge with gusto. The most "innovative" mass transportation idea recently (and this is a decade old already) was an elevated line from the railroad to one of the airports. If that is true for the city that never sleeps, it must be even worse for all the other cities.

As for inter state train transport ... ironcially it is still cheaper to fly.

On your last point, I think it'll actually be getting cheaper (albeit slower) to take the train since trains are so much more fuel efficient than planes the rising gas prices will have less of an effect on the profit margins of Amtrak and other companies and the companies will probably decide to take a profit hit instead of raising their prices and reducing their already rather low demand.

[gdeangel]

About gas prices... just saw something about how we are drilling record number of oil wells in Ohio... the kind of small production stuff that you see as you cruise through farmland on the highway. Also just read somewhere that over 30% of the state's natural gas and oil reserves are under Lake Erie. But it's been declared off limits...

You'll know the price has peaked when they declare its back within limits. Maybe by then we'll get smart enough to realize that switching to alternative energy takes a "big bang", not a slow grinding trickle of confusing, misinformation and loopholes.

Has anyone else heard about the ethanol credit for US produced fuel that was so lucrative and so poorly drafted that European producers were shipping their ethanol across the ocean (yeah, the ships run on diesel) to mix in a little bit of American produced ethanol, and then shipping the cocktail back to Europe to sell. Now that are real winner for the environment, right??

[Mr_Adams]

Ethanol will never work. I think the figures came out to us needing to cover 98% of U.S. soil in corn crops to make the U.S. self dependent in the energy market.

[frogger4]

I will quote from the New York Times here, because it explains all these high prices very nicely. This article is a few weeks old, so the prices have gone up even more since.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/busin ... ?th&emc=th

As oil prices soared to record levels in recent years, basic economics suggested that consumption would fall and supplies would rise as producers drilled for more oil.

But as prices flirt with $120 a barrel, many energy experts are becoming worried that neither seems to be happening. Higher prices have done little to suppress global demand or attract new production, and the resulting mismatch has sent oil prices ever higher.

That has translated into more pain at the pump, with gasoline setting a fresh record of $3.60 a gallon nationwide on Monday. Experts expect prices above $4 a gallon this summer, and one analyst recently predicted that gasoline could reach $7 in the next four years.

A central reason that oil supplies are not rising much is that major producers outside the OPEC cartel, like Russia, Mexico and Norway, are showing troubling signs of sluggishness. Unlike OPEC, whose explicit goal is to regulate the supply of oil to keep prices up, these countries are the free traders of the oil market, with every incentive to produce flat-out at a time of high prices.

But for a variety of reasons, including sharply higher drilling costs and a rise of nationalistic policies that restrict foreign investment, these countries are failing to increase their output. They seem stuck at about 50 million barrels of oil a day, or 60 percent of the world’s oil supplies, with few prospects for growth.

“According to normal economic theory, and the history of oil, rising prices have two major effects,” said Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency in Paris. “They reduce demand and they induce oil supplies. Not this time.”

With global supplies tight, geopolitics continue to play a big role in pushing up oil prices. Oil futures closed at $118.75 a barrel, up 23 cents, on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after strikes by oil workers in Scotland and Nigeria that shut down nearly 1.7 percent of the world’s daily production.

Countries outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have been the main source of production growth in the past three decades, as new fields were discovered in Alaska, the North Sea and the Caspian region.

But analysts at Barclays Capital said last week that non-OPEC supplies were “seemingly dead in the water.” Goldman Sachs raised similar concerns last month, saying that growth in non-OPEC supplies “can no longer be taken for granted.”

At the same time, oil consumption keeps expanding. Global consumption is forecast to increase by 1.2 million barrels a day this year, to 87.2 million barrels a day, with much of the growth in demand coming from China, India and the Middle East, according to the International Energy Agency, a group that advises industrialized countries.

In the United States and through much of the developed world, the higher fuel prices have led drivers to reduce their consumption, and gasoline demand is expected to drop this year. But that drop will be more than offset by the rise in energy demand from developing countries. In the next two decades, demand is projected to jump by 35 percent, and developing countries will consume more oil than industrialized countries.

Higher oil prices mean record profits for oil companies that have, to some extent, masked the supply problems. Exxon Mobil and Chevron are both expected to deliver knockout performances when reporting quarterly earnings this week, even as they struggle to increase production.

“What is disturbing here is that things seem to get worse, not better,” said David Greely, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. “These high prices are not attracting meaningful new supplies.”

The outlook for oil supplies “signals a period of unprecedented scarcity,” Jeff Rubin, an analyst at CIBC World Markets, said last week. Oil prices might exceed $200 a barrel by 2012, he said, a level that would very likely mean $7-a-gallon gasoline in the United States.

Some regions are simply running out of reserves. Norway’s production has slumped by 25 percent since its peak in 2001, and in Britain, output has dropped 43 percent in eight years. Production from the giant Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska has dropped by 65 percent from its peak two decades ago.

In many other places, the problems are not below ground, as energy executives like to put it, but above ground. Higher petroleum taxes and more costly licensing agreements, a scarcity of workers and swelling costs, as well as political wrangling and violence, are making it harder to raise production.

“It’s a crunch,” said J. Robinson West, chairman of PFC Energy, an energy consulting firm in Washington. “The world is not running out of oil, but rather it’s running out of oil production capacity.”

Mexico, the second-biggest exporter to the United States, seems increasingly helpless to find new supplies to offset the collapse of its largest oil field, Cantarell. A combination of falling production and rising domestic consumption could wipe out Mexico’s exports within five years.

Foreign investment could help Mexico produce oil from deeper waters, but that is a controversial proposition in a country where oil has long been seen as part of the national patrimony.

Another country, Russia, is also a focus of analysts’ worries. Russia is not exactly running out of places to look for oil — a huge chunk of eastern Siberia remains unexplored — and the country has been the biggest contributor to the growth in energy supplies in the last decade.

But Russian energy officials warned recently that the days of stunning growth that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union were over, as the country focuses on stabilizing its output. Russia today produces about 10 million barrels of oil a day, up from a low of 6 million barrels in 1996.

The Russian government has been muscling Western companies to gain more control over its energy resources. That rise in energy nationalism could freeze new investment and slow any meaningful growth in supplies there for years.

As countries like Russia slow output, analysts say OPEC will have to pick up the slack. The oil cartel accounts for 40 percent of the world’s oil exports and owns more than 75 percent of global reserves. But there are serious concerns that OPEC will also find it tough to increase production.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, is completing a $50 billion plan to increase capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day, but it signaled recently that it would not go beyond that. That means Saudi Arabia could fall short of the 15 million barrels a day that most experts had expected it to produce in the long run.

OPEC’s 13 members plan to spend $150 billion to expand their capacity by five million barrels a day by 2012. But OPEC will need to pump 60 million barrels a day by 2030, up from around 36 million barrels a day today, to meet the projected growth in demand. Analysts say that without Iran and Iraq — where nearly 30 years of wars and sanctions have crippled oil production — reaching that level will be impossible.

Not everyone is pessimistic about energy supplies. A study by the National Petroleum Council, an industry group that provides advice to the secretary of energy, concluded that the world still had plenty of petroleum resources that could be tapped.

In fact, high prices have set off a global dash for oil. Brazil, for example, has struck large offshore fields that could turn the country into one of the world’s top 10 producers. But developing new fields can take many years.

To make up the shortfall, the world is also increasingly turning to fuels from unconventional sources, like biofuels or heavy oil. Canadian tar sands, for example, have attracted large investments.

But the International Energy Agency estimates that current investments will be insufficient to replace declining oil production. The energy agency said it would take $5.4 trillion by 2030 to raise global output. Otherwise, it warned that a crisis before 2015 involving “an abrupt run-up in prices” could not be ruled out.

if this was tl;dr then stop driving or suck it and pay the price!

[tzor]

On your last point, I think it'll actually be getting cheaper (albeit slower) to take the train since trains are so much more fuel efficient than planes the rising gas prices will have less of an effect on the profit margins of Amtrak and other companies and the companies will probably decide to take a profit hit instead of raising their prices and reducing their already rather low demand.

I used to go to Gen Con (New York to Indy) and I compared the prices and the plane was always cheeper. I just checked amtrack and travelocity for the prices using the date of 24 June as a reference point so I could secure relatively good faires and availability. A round trip (non stop) from NY to Indy is roughly $238 by plane. A one way train trip is $175 ($350 round trip) and actually requires three different trains. The train route would take over a day (25 hours) because it has go go all the way south to Washington DC and then all the way to Chicago.

Once again this brings up the problem of size, as a population is disbursed evenly over an area, the complexity of the system grows in proportion to the area, which is the square of the distance. Trains are great for connecting hubs to hubs, but you need a complete grid to become effective because someone from point A is always going to want to get to point B.

Let's take a simplier case, NY to washington DC.
Train: As low as $98 one way - $196 Round Trip
Plane: $168 Round Trip

Mind you here the difference is 3 1/2 hours vs 1 1/2 hours and I might be interested in the view from the train. But the plane is still cheaper.

Could it be that Amtrack sucks? It might rabbit, it might.

[jonesthecurl]

On your last point, I think it'll actually be getting cheaper (albeit slower) to take the train since trains are so much more fuel efficient than planes the rising gas prices will have less of an effect on the profit margins of Amtrak and other companies and the companies will probably decide to take a profit hit instead of raising their prices and reducing their already rather low demand.

I used to go to Gen Con (New York to Indy) and I compared the prices and the plane was always cheeper. I just checked amtrack and travelocity for the prices using the date of 24 June as a reference point so I could secure relatively good faires and availability. A round trip (non stop) from NY to Indy is roughly $238 by plane. A one way train trip is $175 ($350 round trip) and actually requires three different trains. The train route would take over a day (25 hours) because it has go go all the way south to Washington DC and then all the way to Chicago.

Once again this brings up the problem of size, as a population is disbursed evenly over an area, the complexity of the system grows in proportion to the area, which is the square of the distance. Trains are great for connecting hubs to hubs, but you need a complete grid to become effective because someone from point A is always going to want to get to point B.

Let's take a simplier case, NY to washington DC.
Train: As low as $98 one way - $196 Round Trip
Plane: $168 Round Trip

Mind you here the difference is 3 1/2 hours vs 1 1/2 hours and I might be interested in the view from the train. But the plane is still cheaper.

Could it be that Amtrack sucks? It might rabbit, it might.

Yeah, we're all going to Baltimore a little later this year. Drive? cheapest with a full car, still, but last time we did that the congestions was ludicrous and we just took hours and hours. Fly? maybe but the hassle of checking in, security, getting to and from airports etc means that the journey takes way longer than the flight time. Train will probably win out, but not because of price, which is about the same as air.

Last year I took a train to Boston. For reasons which are not clear to me, if you took the train that had limited stops, it was about 40% dearer, so I went all the way on what was effectively a local. I don't see how that benefitted Amtrack, when there were seats on the faster one unused. And the average speed of the train was around 25mph. Thus totally wiping out a potential benefit of train travel.

IN France, where they take trains seriously, long-distance trains can hit well over 100mph, and average far higher than road travel too (I don't have the current figures, but the last time I looked it was impressive).

[tzor]

IN France, where they take trains seriously, long-distance trains can hit well over 100mph, and average far higher than road travel too (I don't have the current figures, but the last time I looked it was impressive).

France also invests more on railway infrastructure than the United States. Currently the biggest problem to high speed trains is the lack of support for them on the rails.

[sgom]

i heard a report on the radio a few days ago sayint that unleaded in saudi was at the equivalent of 5 pence a litre. in the uk today 24/6/08 unleaded is £1.15 a litre, diesel £1.32 a litre 4.5 litres to a gallon. last week when the tanker driver strikes were on it was reported that one greedy twat was charging £1.99 a litre

[rocky mountain]

guess what all you americans! it worse in Canada!!!
its about 1.48 CAD/L here. gallons are about 4 litres, so that means about 5.92 CAD/L. with the current exchange rate, it is about $6.00 USD/gal. so don't complain (i'm lucky i don't drive yet)

[Pedronicus]

The problem lies with Airlines getting fuel with no taxes applied so that they are cheaper than taking the train.

I'd like to go to Scotland this year for my holiday for a change, but I know that it will be more expensive to take the train than either drive or of fly. Until trains are priced in such a way that for me to have to get to a central London train station, buy my return tickets, and then get from my Scottish train station to the place I'm staying at is cheaper than driving or getting a plane (I prefer taking the train option - because only I drive and I'd like to gaze out of the window at something to look at instead of clouds or another cars number plate down the motorway) nothing will change. I fail to understand why 300-800 people all travelling together is more expensive than 2 people driving in a car. It's ludicrous.

England used to have a huge rail network that was closed down in the sixties due to the cheapness of the motorcar over railways, with little unprofitable lines heading in all directions.

the trains should always of been given massive government subsidies over airlines. keeping English holidaymakers in this country instead of spending their hard earned pound notes overseas, isn't an economic brainwave.

And whilst I'm on the subject of fuel subsides - the Chinese government has been making petrol cheaper (refined) than crude costs. China is trying to strangle the west, and succeeding. We have for too long been too happy to by plasma tv's, playstations and mobile phones for f*ck all without realising that our own manufacturing base has been destroyed in the vain attempt to chase cheap deals and keep inflation in check by a import deficit.

All of you out there, who buy cheap clothes made in Indian sweatshops and cheap electronic goods made in China and now who no longer live in a country that cant offer manual work to those who weren't so academic at school, have screwed up your own country by grabbing bargains at the expense of your own countries ability to continue to make things. Not everyone comes out of school a clever person - 30% aren't academic and need manual work. With no more manual work - these people will bum around and make your country even worse off.

The west is fucked, and we only have our greedy selves to blame. Get on your bike, take the train, leave the car at home - it's all too late. oil was always going to run out, but successive western governments have been far too happy to think - this shit is going to hit the fan - but when the time comes - I'll be retired and it's someone else's problem.
Well I'm 39 and the problem was mentioned in kids books about cars when i was 7-8, and here we are still trying to pump oil out of the ground to beat the problem.

Too little has been done too late. Biofuels = starvation or / and higher food costs. Nuclear energy is going to cost 30 billion in England just to get rid of and clean up the old stuff we used in the 50's-80's.

Scientists and the people we voted into power have sold us all short.

The only source of true pwer I can think of is drilling so deep into the earth, so that we meet liquid magma and use that to power steam turbines. but even the heat contained in the earths core would be cooled over millenniums until it no longer was liquid and failed to create a magnetic field to keep us safe from solar radiation.

The only way out of this mess is a global halt to reproduction of humans. 1 child per couple. Until we take this step, we will consume the world of everything from fuel in the ground to all the fish in the sea.

[DiM]

We have just hit $4.00 per gallon for regular unleaded and $4.59 pg for diesel in Michigan. Freakin unreal. Post your community gas prices, I'd be interested to the comparison.

average wage in USA is ~40k / year. and you have a price of $4.00 per gallon. this means the average american can buy 10,000 gallons of unleaded regular each year. or 37,800 liters.
in my country the average wage is 4200 /year. and the price is $2/liter ( $7.5/gallon) this means the average romanian can purchase 560 gallons of unleaded regular each year. or 2,100 liters.

and yet despite the fact that on average we can afford 20 times less fuel we do not bitch whine and moan as much as you guys do.

i have friends and relatives in the US and almost everytime i talk to them they complain about the fuel. WTF?

and on top of this, food costs more in romania, houses cost more in romania, cars cost more, electronics cost more, clothes cost more, public transportation costs more, basically everything (except medical services) costs more here.

so next time you feel like bitching think that there are places where it's much more expensive to live.

[fireedud]

We have just hit $4.00 per gallon for regular unleaded and $4.59 pg for diesel in Michigan. Freakin unreal. Post your community gas prices, I'd be interested to the comparison.

average wage in USA is ~40k / year. and you have a price of $4.00 per gallon. this means the average american can buy 10,000 gallons of unleaded regular each year. or 37,800 liters.
in my country the average wage is 4200 /year. and the price is $2/liter ( $7.5/gallon) this means the average romanian can purchase 560 gallons of unleaded regular each year. or 2,100 liters.

and yet despite the fact that on average we can afford 20 times less fuel we do not bitch whine and moan as much as you guys do.

i have friends and relatives in the US and almost everytime i talk to them they complain about the fuel. WTF?

and on top of this, food costs more in romania, houses cost more in romania, cars cost more, electronics cost more, clothes cost more, public transportation costs more, basically everything (except medical services) costs more here.

so next time you feel like bitching think that there are places where it's much more expensive to live.

Remember most Americans are pampered, ignorant little crybabies. But I'm just curious, aren't cars more fuel efficient in the EU?

[Hologram]

On your last point, I think it'll actually be getting cheaper (albeit slower) to take the train since trains are so much more fuel efficient than planes the rising gas prices will have less of an effect on the profit margins of Amtrak and other companies and the companies will probably decide to take a profit hit instead of raising their prices and reducing their already rather low demand.

I used to go to Gen Con (New York to Indy) and I compared the prices and the plane was always cheeper. I just checked amtrack and travelocity for the prices using the date of 24 June as a reference point so I could secure relatively good faires and availability. A round trip (non stop) from NY to Indy is roughly $238 by plane. A one way train trip is $175 ($350 round trip) and actually requires three different trains. The train route would take over a day (25 hours) because it has go go all the way south to Washington DC and then all the way to Chicago.

Once again this brings up the problem of size, as a population is disbursed evenly over an area, the complexity of the system grows in proportion to the area, which is the square of the distance. Trains are great for connecting hubs to hubs, but you need a complete grid to become effective because someone from point A is always going to want to get to point B.

Let's take a simplier case, NY to washington DC.
Train: As low as $98 one way - $196 Round Trip
Plane: $168 Round Trip

Mind you here the difference is 3 1/2 hours vs 1 1/2 hours and I might be interested in the view from the train. But the plane is still cheaper.

Could it be that Amtrack sucks? It might rabbit, it might.

Well, the same can be said for planes (cheaper hub to hub), it's just that planes and trains have somewhat different hubs, so it depends on where you are and where you're going. For instance, Portland International (PDX) to San Diego is running at about $235 these days where the Amtrak run, which includes a stop at Los Angeles, goes for $96 on weekdays and $119 on weekends.

The distance may also factor in, such as cross-country in a plane will probably be cheaper than a train, but across one or two states may prove the train to be cheaper.

/edit: Sorry, the train fares were one way whereas the plane fares were round trip. Still cheaper though, so I suppose it depends on the specific travel needs.

[jonesthecurl]

We have just hit $4.00 per gallon for regular unleaded and $4.59 pg for diesel in Michigan. Freakin unreal. Post your community gas prices, I'd be interested to the comparison.

average wage in USA is ~40k / year. and you have a price of $4.00 per gallon. this means the average american can buy 10,000 gallons of unleaded regular each year. or 37,800 liters.
in my country the average wage is 4200 /year. and the price is $2/liter ( $7.5/gallon) this means the average romanian can purchase 560 gallons of unleaded regular each year. or 2,100 liters.

and yet despite the fact that on average we can afford 20 times less fuel we do not bitch whine and moan as much as you guys do.

i have friends and relatives in the US and almost everytime i talk to them they complain about the fuel. WTF?

and on top of this, food costs more in romania, houses cost more in romania, cars cost more, electronics cost more, clothes cost more, public transportation costs more, basically everything (except medical services) costs more here.

so next time you feel like bitching think that there are places where it's much more expensive to live.

Remember most Americans are pampered, ignorant little crybabies. But I'm just curious, aren't cars more fuel efficient in the EU?

In general yes, because the fuel costs more. That's why there's finally a move to slightly more fuel-efficient cars in the US.

One of the reasons that fuel prices have risen so fast in the last two years (more than doubling for gas where I am) is that an infaltion in the base price mattes less when the fuel taxes are as comparatively low as they are in the US (most EU governments take far more tax/duty on petrol than the US).

The other is that a US dollar now buys so much less. (any Food Channel fans noticed that they've stopped repeating the "$20 dollars a day" program? It's not 'cos they're bored with it, it's not 'cos of inflation, it's because $20 dollars now buys about 13 euros).

[Snorri1234]

The problem lies with Airlines getting fuel with no taxes applied so that they are cheaper than taking the train.

I'd like to go to Scotland this year for my holiday for a change, but I know that it will be more expensive to take the train than either drive or of fly. Until trains are priced in such a way that for me to have to get to a central London train station, buy my return tickets, and then get from my Scottish train station to the place I'm staying at is cheaper than driving or getting a plane (I prefer taking the train option - because only I drive and I'd like to gaze out of the window at something to look at instead of clouds or another cars number plate down the motorway) nothing will change. I fail to understand why 300-800 people all travelling together is more expensive than 2 people driving in a car. It's ludicrous.

British Railways are fucking weird. The prices are so unbelievably high.

If I want to go to france by train however, I can get in Paris from Amsterdam in 4 hours for about 70 euros. That's faster and cheaper than taking the car!