Ask nearly anyone who drives a gasoline-powered vehicle, and they’ll grumble about the sky-high prices at the pump.
Driven largely by world oil prices, gasoline in the United States and other countries has spiked in recent months. It may be little consolation for people paying $80 or more now for a fill-up, but with vehicles getting higher mileage than in decades past, cars are traveling farther today on a tank, lowering the cost-per-mile-traveled. Still, the economic hardship for many people is real. And the issue is likely to factor into November elections.
Daniel Sperling is director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis. A professor of civil and environmental engineering, and a member of the California Air Resources Board, he has studied transportation trends for decades, authoring or co-authoring more than 250 technical papers and more than 13 books on transportation and fuels.
