The Euro at $1.55

On 15 Mar, 17:37, Hatunen wrote:
On Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:50:09 +0100, Alfred Molon

wrote:
In article , Dusty Furtile
Morrocan says...

Much of the USA has been built around the assumption that cars will be
available to all forever. That demand is enormous, and unless the
USA's middle classes are going to be decimated, a way will have to
found to maintain this mode of transport.

It's just a matter of finding a cheap and clean source of energy
(perhaps fusion reactors?). Then switch to electrical cars and the
problem of individual transportation is solved.

Oh. Easy, then.

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

or just work from home......although I'm thinking about starting a
Donkey hire company....

From:
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Newsgroups: rec.travel.europe
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:03:10 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: The Euro at $1.55

The mighty dollar is wobbling - it may be childish, schadenfreude or
just daft but ¡Yippee! ... and since we pay for our petrol in USA
dollars which are cheaper for we Europeans, how come we don´t see
cheaper prices at the pumps?

I can't answer that question (although I suspect that ol' debbil "taxes"
plays a big role), but let me pose another: Does anyone know of a website
that tracks current at-the-pump gas prices in European countries, especially
in the larger cities? Failing that, does anyone have any idea of current gas
prices in said cities and in southern France? By the liter would be
preferable.
GMW

On 15 Mar, 17:36, Hatunen wrote:
On Sat, 15 Mar 2008 07:57:23 -0700 (PDT), Señor Castro



wrote:
On 15 Mar, 13:35, Mxsmanic wrote:
Dusty Furtile Morrocan writes:
Did you round up or down the least significant digit?

I rounded up, motivated by my natural optimism.

Of course a simple light rail system won't have any great effect, but
it seems to be a popular choice for local governments everywhere (even
here in Genova), despite that they rarely bring much benefit. It would
be much cheaper to carve bicycle lanes of various roads, and would
probably be used more. Not the bicycles would be so great in the
furnace of Phoenix in summer.

The problem of cities like Phoenix is that they just aren't laid out to favor
any form of collective transportation. Their design assumes that everyone
will have a personal vehicle. Once this assumption takes root and guides the
development of the area for more than half a century, there isn't really any
way to change it.

One compromise would be to build mass transit in specific areas and encourage
development around it, so that you might eventually have a dense city center
or residential/business district that can profit from mass transit, with no
need for cars. But Phoenix doesn't really have any area suitable for that
experiment; even downtown areas are sparsely occupied compared to other
cities, and they additionally do not have the proper mix of business and
residential space.

If fuel problems ever progress to the point that driving individual vehicles
becomes truly not feasible or perhaps even impossible, cities like Phoenix and
Los Angeles may wither and die, except for one or two core areas that will
redevelop into Manhattan-style neighborhoods.

don't they have bicycles ?

Phoenix Metro has temperatures of 115F/46C in the summer. It also
sprawls some 100km across.

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

...electric Solar powered bicycles....

On Mar 16, 9:33 am, "G. M. Watson" wrote:
From:
Organization:http://groups.google.com
Newsgroups: rec.travel.europe
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:03:10 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: The Euro at $1.55

The mighty dollar is wobbling - it may be childish, schadenfreude or
just daft but ¡Yippee! ... and since we pay for our petrol in USA
dollars which are cheaper for we Europeans, how come we don´t see
cheaper prices at the pumps?

I can't answer that question (although I suspect that ol' debbil "taxes"
plays a big role), but let me pose another: Does anyone know of a website
that tracks current at-the-pump gas prices in European countries, especially
in the larger cities? Failing that, does anyone have any idea of current gas
prices in said cities and in southern France? By the liter would be
preferable.
GMW

Can´t answer the question but Andorra always has the cheapest petrol
and diesel.

Does anyone know of a website
that tracks current at-the-pump gas prices in European countries,
especially
in the larger cities? Failing that, does anyone have any idea of current
gas
prices in said cities and in southern France? By the liter would be
preferable.
GMW

http://www.aaroadwatch.ie/eupetrolprices/

Gerry

writes:

The mighty dollar is wobbling - it may be childish, schadenfreude or
just daft but ¡Yippee! ... and since we pay for our petrol in USA
dollars which are cheaper for we Europeans, how come we don´t see
cheaper prices at the pumps?

Because oil prices are only used as a justification for raising petrol prices,
never as a justification for lowering them.

EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque) writes:

No one is going to walk anywhere AT ALL in Phoenix summer weather!

That's another problem with Phoenix. The city has long been popular with
retirees who don't often leave home, but for anyone who wants to be out and
about most of the time, the summer weather is a killer (sometimes in a literal
sense).

Señor Castro writes:

don't they have bicycles ?

At least in Phoenix, bicycles are not an option in the summer. Los Angeles
gets hot enough to rule them out for the most part, too.

Dusty Furtile Morrocan writes:

Much of the USA has been built around the assumption that cars will be
available to all forever. That demand is enormous, and unless the
USA's middle classes are going to be decimated, a way will have to
found to maintain this mode of transport.

The time may come when those automobile-oriented cities will be decimated
instead. If fuel is truly unavailable, or is so expensive that it simply
cannot serve as a basis for commuting, people will have no choice but to
abandon large cities that depend on automobiles, or redesign parts of them to
accommodate mass transit, bicycles, or walking, while the rest of the
metropolitan area decays slowly into rust and dust.

It's interesting in that densely-populated cities like Paris or London have
the opposite problem today: some people absolutely insist on driving cars,
producing huge amounts of noise, pollution, and traffic in these cities, even
though the cities could easily survive without any private motor vehicle
traffic.

Alfred Molon writes:

It's just a matter of finding a cheap and clean source of energy
(perhaps fusion reactors?). Then switch to electrical cars and the
problem of individual transportation is solved.

Not unless someone can find a more energy-dense method of storing electrical
power than lead batteries. When you have to spend two hours driving 80 km to
work, a car that needs a recharge after 50 km isn't going to do the job.