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Oil Companies Sneaking Back into Their Price Gouging Ways

 
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Dieseljim
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Joined: 26 Jun 2008
Posts: 548
Location: Perry, NY

PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2009 8:22 am    Post subject: Oil Companies Sneaking Back into Their Price Gouging Ways Reply with quote

To add insult to injury in this economic recession, I noticed that the oil companies are sneaking back into their price gouging ways as the travel season draws near.It is especially true here in Western New York just at a time when people are losing their jobs right and left. Maybe rebuilding the intercity bus network may not be such a bad idea, especially when coupled with connecting rural transit systems together. If there was an industry that the Obama Administration should be riding roughshod over it is the Oil Industry especially with their illegal zone pricing practices which hammer the northeast harder than any other part of country. I thought such practices were illegal. If gas and diesel prices should get anywhere near last year's levels, people would be better off collecting welfare than working only to have it sucked up by the gas pump and not be able to support the family. If the prices get that high again, perhaps more people will be "going postal" over that. All the more reason for a balanced transportation network rather than the patchwork mess we have now. If it's broke, someone had damn well better fix it. In this country, transportation IS broken in more ways than one.
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ripta42
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Location: Pawtucket, RI / Woburn, MA

PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2009 10:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Price gouging? Gasoline has gone up about two cents a gallon here in the past month, and heating oil has dropped about twenty cents. With the weather getting warmer, demand has increased for the former and decreased for the latter, which means that prices should do the same.
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Dieseljim
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Joined: 26 Jun 2008
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Location: Perry, NY

PostPosted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It hasn't got that way yet. The law of supply and demand has gone out the window with the manipulators on WALL STREET. I am not going to be made a prisoner in my own area like I was last year, not without a fight. and would urge others in WNY to do the same.
ripta42 wrote:
Price gouging? Gasoline has gone up about two cents a gallon here in the past month, and heating oil has dropped about twenty cents. With the weather getting warmer, demand has increased for the former and decreased for the latter, which means that prices should do the same.
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HwyHaulier




Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 932
Location: Harford County, MD

PostPosted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 7:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dieseljim -

Which Devil do you happen to prefer? Which way do you want it?

1) The long and well known cyclical prices at the pump, as set by the various oil firms, or,

2) Lower base prices but an added phenomenally heavy (and economy wrecking) new tax burden. That latter would make Greenies ever so happy.
It also would fund a (completely otherwise foolish) Euro style rail system, maybe community support bus into every dot on the map (and
unincorporated dots) all across the enormous land mass that is the US?

It might result in sharply higher prices on every possible item at Big Mart, your local grocery, and everywhere else! But, hey, sure will teach lessons
to the evil carbon producers!

Sidenote: Despite all the visionary talk of any number of dreamy eyed, but thoroughly ignorant types, transportation options long a complete fantasy.
This nation has never been so prosperous so as to provide "options" at most all points in the over three million square miles land area that is the US.
As a nation, we can only afford even less these days!

................Vern...............
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Dieseljim
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Joined: 26 Jun 2008
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Location: Perry, NY

PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 7:29 am    Post subject: Which Way I would Like To go? Reply with quote

Well, to be able to get anywhere in the state entirely by using public transportation even using the park n ride gag would be nice. Good bus service would be a big help to rural areas,too, especially through line service even using some of those minicoaches that more and more operators are using. Yes, they CAN be equipped with restrooms in the rear just like your full si ze coach be it MCI or Prevost, A BALANCED policy where ALL modes of transportation are on an equal footing as far as funding and support goes is a must. Not the lopsided nonsense that started back in the Eisenhower era, This nation once had the finest passenger train and intercity bus networks in the world. That all ended when the sums of money were poured into the Interstate Highway System and the airways. I can see the need for some of the Interstates, but was 42,000 miles really necessary? The short haul airplane has just about outlived its usefulness as far as commercial carriers go. If every mode was made to do what they do best instead of stealing traffic from the others, we would not have the mess we are in now.
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HwyHaulier




Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 932
Location: Harford County, MD

PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 8:28 am    Post subject: Re: Which Way I would Like To go? Reply with quote

Dieseljim wrote:
...If every mode was made to do what they do best instead of stealing traffic from the others, we would not have the mess we are in now...


Dieseljim -

Textbook theoreticals? Even heavily experienced planners concede that in the overwhelming number of instances, the privately owned
vehicle is the low cost, optimal mode. Please note that, when the old USSR wound down, impacts on various transit operations there.
An immediate effect? Instances of immediate, over half, loss of riders on many systems...

The chronic problems of attempting "options" all over the scattered suburban areas adjoining large metro areas are not amenable to
easy and economic fixes. Besides, presently situated State Legislatures simply won't find funds for zealous expansions and adventurism.
There's more than enough insoluble problems confronting physicists and matheticians! I suspect common carrier, suburban transport
at least as daunting...

Concerning rural transport support. Kindly take some time to review the thinking on the site of the Minneapolis FRB on the point. In its
most objective, near clinically sterile analyses, they have (more or less) thrown up their collected hands! There's a point where there is
"fancy" that no one can afford! Besides, if one located (say, as an example) on a little spread twenty miles outside Cody, WY, they
never expected any sort of common carrier service coming thru town. Shoot! Most of the communities never had so much as a train!

....................Vern.................
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Dieseljim
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Joined: 26 Jun 2008
Posts: 548
Location: Perry, NY

PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 12:18 pm    Post subject: Bus service in Rural Areas Reply with quote

All I was trying to do is look ahead to a time when a lot of us "baby boomers" will no longer be capable of operating a car safely as well as looking to taking care of those without a vehicle. If you think the problem with elderly motorists accidentally hitting the gas instead of the brake and mowing down a crowd of people is bad, it is going to get a lot worse and I do not want anyone's blood on my hands. One close call is enough (via a head on c ollision I was involved in 97) and an experience I do not care to repeat. That is why I am tossing about trial balloons in rebuilding the bus systems and train systems we once had to SUPPLEMENT the auto and truck and put the short haul jets out to pasture. Each vehicle has a job at which it is best, be it car, bus, train, or plane. If they could all work together there there would be a truly balanced system. On a few trips, I have tried it myself, use a car to connect with a bus which connected to a plane, which in turn connected with a train, INTERMODALISM at its best.
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HwyHaulier




Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 932
Location: Harford County, MD

PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 1:03 pm    Post subject: Re: Bus service in Rural Areas Reply with quote

Dieseljim wrote:
...All I was trying to do is look ahead to a time when a lot of us "baby boomers" will no longer be capable of operating a car safely as well as looking to taking care of those without a vehicle...

Dieseljim -

Oh, agreed! It is a very legitimate concern. State Of Maryland, in fact, has served as a US DOT testbed for programs designed for safety of elderly drivers.
DOT has a great deal of research in both this particular field, and in areas of driver fatique. The Maryland trial programs also have attraction they aren't
costly to implement...

As for the rest of it, and possible provision of support at myriad, otherwise "no service" areas, that's another set of problems. The Minneapolis FRB work
considered much of it. (BTW. I rather like the sensible statements from them. They write within context of its site in "Real America", with not so much
focus on the barely manageable huge metro areas.)

Concerning issues of, what about the funding? Jerry Brown (California) long tried warning of this, and reminding of "finite resources" realities. Or, there is
just but so much money to spread around. Differences between "want" lists and "need" lists...

.................Vern................
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ripta42
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Age: 44
Joined: 15 Apr 2007
Posts: 1035
Location: Pawtucket, RI / Woburn, MA

PostPosted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 9:41 am    Post subject: Re: Which Way I would Like To go? Reply with quote

Concerning rural transport support. Kindly take some time to review the thinking on the site of the Minneapolis FRB on the point. In its
most objective, near clinically sterile analyses, they have (more or less) thrown up their collected hands! There's a point where there is
"fancy" that no one can afford! Besides, if one located (say, as an example) on a little spread twenty miles outside Cody, WY, they
never expected any sort of common carrier service coming thru town. Shoot! Most of the communities never had so much as a train![/quote]

This quote from "The Regional Transportation Authority in Northeastern Illinois" by Illinois Consitutional Convention delegate and RTA chairman Joseph A. Tecson, sums up the attiture toward rural public transportation quite well. The speaker is delegate Henry C. Hendron, Jr. from downstate Albion, IL.

Quote:
I do not believe that mass transportaton is a problem in the 55th District. The only buses we've got are school buses. I know it's not a problem in Edwards County. Our transportation system works something like this, both for the old and the young: if you want to ride you buy an automobile or a truck or a tractor or a horse. We have a saying, 'Those who want to dance, pay the fiddler.'


Most people from rural areas simply aren't interested in public transportation, so there isn't enough of a customer base to make it worthwhile. It doesn't make sense to run a 40 foot long restroom-equipped coach for the five people a week who might ride it. For people who are truly transit-dependent, even small towns generally have some kind of taxi service.
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HwyHaulier




Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 932
Location: Harford County, MD

PostPosted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 6:13 am    Post subject: Re: Which Way I would Like To go? Reply with quote

ripta42 wrote:
...Most people from rural areas simply aren't interested in public transportation, so there isn't enough of a customer base to make it worthwhile...


ripta42 -

Exactly! The Flyover Country folks have their own way in observing old values, and tend to be most self reliant.

Might we suspect there are brilliant staff planners and hangers on, sequestered in various comfortable offices in the Shining Citadel On The Potomac,
who just don't get any of it? Why disturb any of the latter, with rude suggestions that, "...one size fits all..." simply doesn't work? And, in addtion, the
sum total of what any of them do is largely useless?

....................Vern................
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ripta42
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It isn't just self-reliance, but also a lack of a customer base. There really isn't the population to support mass transit, especially if it's subsidized at the state level.
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HwyHaulier




Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 932
Location: Harford County, MD

PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 7:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ripta42 wrote:
It isn't just self-reliance, but also a lack of a customer base. There really isn't the population to support mass transit, especially if it's subsidized at the state level.


ripta42 -

Exactly! Your point is self evident!

That's the way it was. That's the way it is. That's the way it shall ever be. It also clearly illustrates why it was so vital to have much underfloor
Package Express on the schedules. But, UPS and FedEx do that now, and neither board riders...

BTW. The very useful and informative Transit Workers Union site documents a great deal of all this. Many smaller, but now wiser, small towns
which tried transit experiments, but found the continuing costs excessive...

....................Vern...............
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