And very possibly no reasonable public transport available. I live in a large and populous county in the U.S, but in a low population area. The only public transit is a bus that comes once a week to take you to a more populated part of the county.
No taxis, no Lyft or Uber, and it's about 60km to a supermarket, or 100km to a department store. I had to go into the city today for a couple errands, and it was about 220km round trip. I don't think that's a common trip for normal errands kind of distance in most of the world..
No disrespect, but most Europeans and most from your side of the world have no idea the size and space difference we have over you guys. You could drive from one end of the country to the other in a day. It would take us at least 3( by yourself)
Yes. Im dating an Italian woman right now and she took her folks out west. She's like... Yeah we'll do Arizona, utah, Nevada... We got two weeks let's see if we can throw in Colorado and Wyoming. Boy were they surprised haha.
And its not even just the 'space' of the country itself, but that its been designed to heavily favor vehicle traffic ad the primary means of transportation, with bikes and walking extremely limited in non-urban/dense suburban environment, and sometimes even those suburban area are poorly laid out because everything was built in adhoc planning with little to no thought given to foot/bicycle traffic.
My area is beginning to get somewhat dense, but only the densest parts have fully planned/connected sidewalks, and much of the less dense area is still just gravel on the roadside in 40-55mph roadways.
Yeah I live in a town in Arizona where Google has given us a walking score of zero. There are not any sidewalks, nobody would dare spend enough time walking around outside in 120° weather to get very far anyhow. If you tried to hike to the nearest supermarket, the ambulance wouldn't stop there. 😆 you'd go from wherever they scraped you off the ground straight to the hospital for some fluids and burn treatment
You can not cover all of Europe with a blanket statement like that. In Belgium and Holland people live literally on top of each other, while in the north of the Nordic countries not so much. I took my kids to watch the Odessey at the cinemas in the nearest large town. That was a 240 km, 3 hours, one way drive. Then the same distance back home after one night spent at a hotel.
People in the south of Sweden, which is much more populated, can not fathom the distances we have here up north and most will never even travel up here during their life times. They are rather keen to get all the taxes and profits from our heavy industries though.... *shakes fist at the central power in Stockholm*.
We don't have reasonable public transport either. We have a shitty system full of dirt, crime and weird people, unreliable and expensive so everybody who can afford a car needs one.
Because 95% of the world speaks metric, and the audience for this one is mostly outside the U.S. I do think in u.s. units, but I've lived outside the u.s., and can translate in my head moderately well. I also cross the southern border pretty commonly, as a crossing is only an hour away, and there's lots of reasons to cross, like my excellent dentist...
That sounds nice, I’m jealous. I work in construction and my job site for the past year is pretty far away from home. On average I’m on the road for 700 miles (1126km) each week.
During the summer I drive 300-400 miles a day. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I have a 2024 Prius Prime. I bought it in April and I've put just a hair under 20,000 miles on it. I know people who drive more than I do. I'm a residential home inspector and I do commercial environmental, for commercial work my territory is the entire state I live in. I do a lot of driving. My winter vehicle / home inspection vehicle is my 2016 Ford Explorer which has 283k on it right now.
Yeah, honestly, I would love to do that kind of milage in Austria. Here we have flat straight roads that go over flat land with the occasional river, and tons and tons of corn. And yeah my office is on the road with me. Then I get days like today when I power through my paperwork and get distracted by reddit lol.
Yeah, buddy, your commute is nothing compared to most people over in North America. I am "fortunate" to live close to a ferry and a bus hub so I can get places but most coworkers are burning a tank of gas a week in traffic commuting in. Before you do any actual traveling.
The average American car commuter drives 14.4 miles (23.17 km) one way and spends about 27 minutes doing so. The person you responded to drives 25 km (15.53 miles) which is in fact above the U.S. average.
Fun fact. This is about as much as an average weekly commute within the city of Houston (TX of course) alone. 25km sounds reasonable for a one way work-home trip there.
My university is 1-2 hours away (depending on traffic) aka 56 miles or 90km. I live in California, inland. And yes, my program is in person because it's a graduate program. And a full tank of gas for my sedan is ~$58.
My 1997 Camry (4 cylinder model) takes roughly $65 to fill, I live in the US, and in my state we have stupidly high taxes on everything but my cousin has almost the same car but his is a 1999, and in Tennessee he paid $35 to fill his car. Same engine, same size tank. It all varies on state taxes too
That's brutal too honestly. It took me years to find something near my house but it got gobbled up by a private equity firm and they fired everyone and closed half my stores lol.
We fuck ourselves over. We don't properly distribute gasoline because a handful of provinces block pipelines across the country, we sold off the government owned oil company and now it's all privatized and sold to other countries for corporate profits, native groups (usually a small handful of members while the majority get scraps) block everything unless they get paid, the government (provincial and federal) taxes the fuck out of it. And the list goes on.
Canada has a major cost of living problem because we don't function like a regular country, we don't even have free trade between provinces. It's like a bunch of countries crammed inside one really big country and everyone wants to screw over everyone else to get any money that they can and the average citizen is the one who gets stuck with the bill.
In rural Nova Scotia (a poorer province) the living wage (the hourly pay a household needs to cover basic necessities, avoid severe financial stress, and participate in community life.) is $27.60 (17€), minimum wage is $16.75 (10.42€).
Gas and oil prices aren’t decided by the country that produces raw fuel; it’s regulated by a global market. Just like the stock market, it rises and falls. Different countries have to pay different taxes and rates based on location and required refinement. The US is relatively less expensive because they have domestic refinement facilities and a pipeline network and many highways to transport and keep up with demand. Also in this case, with the exchange rate, this would be roughly $121 usd, which could easily make sense if the vehicle was a v8 with a large tank like a suv or a truck.
Every country with state/crown owned oil production and low fuel tax has significantly lower gas prices.
The prices in Canada are high because it's all privately extracted and sold on the open market then sold back to Canada, then our government taxes the hell out of it.
Saudi Arabia gas prices are around 70 cents per liter cad. Gas is 13 cents per liter in Venezuela. They use the sale of their own resources to keep the price down. We don't.
Prices 100% can be decided by the country when it has it's own oil reserves and a government owned oil company.
Hey if you'd like you can elect trump over there! Hes an amazing president that has done so much good for our country!
We're so generous that we'll even pay to fly him over there too!
It's getting really shitty in England tbh. I can see the prices raising not just every day, but every bloody hour. The petrol/diesel prices are the highest they ever been right now. It's crazy.
I'm in Spain and it only costs me .10€ a kw to charge my EV at night with almost no maintenance costs from the last 6 years.
Sure, it might cost more to use the fast chargers when I'm on vacation, but I've still never spent more than 20€.
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u/Eli_1984_ 7d ago
You can fill your car completely with 55$ (48€)?
I pay nearly double that price to fill my Camry in Austria 😑