You walked? What's that?

I only have to look around my campus here in Sacramento to see actually how many cars are on the road. What’s worse, is that—seemingly—about 95% of said cars have one passenger; the driver. On top of this, your average tank of petrol or ‘gas’ will set you back a mere $2.30 a gallon. That’s right, a gallon (that's about 26p a litre). Perhaps I have a chip on my shoulder about the—as I see it—socially optimum price of petrol in the UK, but I really think it’s more than that. The diagram below sums it all up pretty well…

And put it this way, I haven’t seen the price of petrol in the UK at 88p a litre since 2006. In fact, I remember last summer petrol being £1.29 ($1.96) a litre. That’s, what, $7.84 a gallon here in the US! So why are UK residents willing to pay such a high price in order to run their cars? Is there less need for a car in the UK? From my experience the answer is yes but what about public transport? Look at this GM ad for instance:

I wonder sometimes, if the infrastructure and availability of public transport in places like Sacramento was improved whether the number of people using it would even change at all? I don’t know if people are just too comfortable in their cars or just too lazy? Perhaps I am too cynical, but there’s no way I could afford to run my car in the UK the way some people do here… I really think people have the wrong attitude when they view buses by the ‘creeps and weirdos’ who supposedly use them. How about this, my solution to getting the US out of its massive debt is to raise fuel tax and use some of that revenue. Haha...

Jonty x