This is the kind of journalistic nonsense that just drives NewMexiKen crazy. From the opening paragraphs of a lengthy story in Saturday’s New York Times, As Gas Prices Go Up, Impact Trickles Down:
Ms. Tapia’s red 2004 Dodge Neon was supposed to be a ticket to freedom when her brother passed it down to her in January. She had planned to drive to Manhattan each weekend to visit her boyfriend at New York University, and also dreamed of going out to restaurants and making day trips with friends.
But the car has been nothing but a money-guzzler, she said, leaving her so short of cash that the car often sits in the parking lot outside her apartment.
“When I first got the car it was all fun and games, but I found out it’s pretty expensive to fill the tank,” Ms. Tapia said. “I don’t even want to put gas in my car right now.”
Unexpectedly high gas prices are also putting a crimp in the summer plans.
J. R. Cowan, a history major at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., said he decided against a cross-country summer trip because “gas would cost double what I budgeted for when I started dreaming about California last year.”
When Amanda Early, a junior at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., accepted a four-day-a-week summer job in public relations near the campus, she did not realize it would amount to a sentence of spending an entire summer in New Jersey. Ms. Early had planned to drive home to Connecticut every weekend, but she said gas prices would force her to remain in New Jersey in the house she shares with four other girls.
Gasoline prices have gone up one-third since a year ago — 31 percent to be exact.
A trip from Waltham to New York City and back, (about 420 miles) in a Dodge Neon (25 city, 30 highway) would take, let’s say, 16 gallons. Sixteen gallons a year ago cost about $36 ($2.24 X 16). Today it might cost $52 ($3.25 X 16). That’s a difference of $16, so the car sits, but Ms. Tapia has money to eat in restaurants.
Gas for a cross country trip costs one-third more than last year, Mr. Cowan, not double. Even a history major should be able to do that much math.
South Orange, New Jersey, to Hartford in the middle of Connecticut is 266 miles round-trip. Going home for the weekend will now cost Ms. Early $13 more than it did a year ago (at 20 miles per gallon).
Yes, gasoline has gone up. Yes, one-third is a substantial increase. Yes, $13 or $16 is a hardship for some. Yes, and most importantly, we all should consider whether there aren’t more enivronmentally efficient modes of travel we can take.
But it’s not as big a deal as the current journalistic and political hysteria would make it out to be. The tone of the paragraphs excerpted above just does not seem justified. It approaches the level of silliness seen in the live, local, late-breaking coverage of local TV news — from outside office buildings closed hours before. I still expect better from The New York Times.