Gas at $4 a gallon. It is like a magic bullet that gets everyone talking, including the gang at Michigan Messenger. When I started driving, gas was 39 cents a gallon and I am not that old. $1 a gallon came right after the gas lines in the mid 70s and the price has been climbing faster than a monkey in a tree ever since. We gasped at $2, took a deep breath at $3 and most of us think $4 is outrageous. I am now in an elite minority of people in Michigan. I, Jim Fordyce, have somehow managed not to pay $4 a gallon yet. There is nothing special about me, except I don’t drive that much and fill up mid-week, when prices seem to drop back. I did come dangerously close though. I paid $3.99 at a Marathon station near my Lansing home on Tuesday. That tankful of the precious flammable liquid should last me until the middle of next week when I suspect my luck will run out and I will join the $4-plus crowd.

People I talked to grumble about it, but seem resigned to paying it. I don’t quite understand that. We used to have a big set of you know whats in this country. It is what won us World War II, put a man on the moon, and gave us all our computers. So I am amazed there has been so little protest. I am surprised that the truckers haven’t just stopped for a strike and the rest of us haven’t inundated our elected leaders with e-mails and phone calls in such massive amounts that servers slow to a crawl and phone systems fail. While they claim it is out of their control, remember how much gas prices dropped before the last midterm elections when our leaders were concerned about control of the House and Senate changing? Just food for thought and that is about the only food I can afford right now, because the price of gas has driven up the prices at my (locally owned and operated) L&L Food Center right through the roof. Now that I have rambled a little, let’s hear what my colleagues have said, seen and heard. Then, what do you think? Please drop us a comment at the end of this story.

Continued – From Ed Brayton:

One of the ways that the high gas prices have had a major effect in Montcalm County, where I live, is in the ability to maintain the roads adequately. The increase in gas prices over the last few years has come at a time of decreasing state and federal aid; the result has been the devastation of the road commission budget. Since 2004, the funds received by Montcalm County from the Michigan Transportation Fund, which makes up the bulk of the annual budget for the county road commission, have declined from $5.9 million a year to just under $4.1 million in 2008. During that same time period, the yearly cost of fuel has more than doubled, from $254,000 in 2004 to $445,000 in just the first half of 2008.

With a larger and larger chunk of the budget being taken up by fuel costs, the commission has had to make significant cuts elsewhere in the budget. Five employees have either been laid off or not replaced when they retire. They are mowing the sides of the roads once a year rather than twice. Road repair projects have been put off to the future and some roads may even be turned back from pavement to gravel because the latter are cheaper to maintain. Bob Brundage, vice chair of the Montcalm County Road Commission, told me that having to do this will increase costs to citizens in other ways:

“The increase in fuel costs has forced us to reduce even basic maintenance. In the long run, that translates into lower quality roads and thus higher costs to consumers due to vehicle damage.”

Brundage notes that with such budgetary problems, the commission is forced to prioritize what it can get done and focus on the most crucial projects. “The greatest concern is public safety,” he says, “so snow removal has to be a priority.” He says he hears public complaints about the condition of the roads and he understands their frustration, but there just isn’t much that can be done with revenue decreasing and costs soaring.

From Todd Heywood:

Three Mid-Michigan residents discuss the impact of $4 gasoline on their everyday lives, from work to socializing.

For 57-year-old Dean Shaffer, a contractor from St. Johns, the gas prices are not an issue. With all seriousness, he said, “I love to pay the high prices. I want to get the best gasoline,” he said. “Besides, I have no control over it.”

But 27-year-old Lissa Blon of East Lansing doesn’t see it the same way. “I drive to Ann Arbor three times a week. I had to take out a student loan to pay for gas,” she said. And while she lives in East Lansing, she is preparing to move to the east side of Lansing to be near her job at Gone Wired Cafe. “I can walk to work.”

Blon also said if she were going to Lansing Community College, rather than Washtenaw Community College, she would rely on the Capital Area Transportation Authority for a ride. “I wish they had public transportation like they do in Europe.”

Comic book publisher and illustrator Jay Jacot, 28, said he has to drive for his work. But to address it, he and his co-publishers often carpool to shows: “It’s just a bigger write-off at the end of the year.”

But the high gas prices have stalled his movements while home in Lansing. “I have limited the amount of driving I do around town,” he said.

From Eartha Jane Melzer:

Patrick Ivory of Traverse City was amazed this month when his ‘99 Ford Metro sold for $3,200 — almost $1,000 more than he paid for it three years ago — within two hours of posting a sale ad on Craigslist.

Ivory has always driven the most fuel efficient cars available to him, and has sometimes been ridiculed for choosing three-cylinder vehicles, but he’s detected a dramatic change in attitudes recently.

Now, as Ivory hunts for a replacement car, he says he’s found that increased demand has pushed Metros out of his price range.

“They are asking exorbitant prices for cars with a lot of miles. One rebuilt one was listed at $3,500, I went back the next day and it was listed at $4,500.

“I’m hoping now to find something with a little less gas mileage. An old [Toyota] Corolla can get 40 miles per gallon as opposed to the 50 I was getting, and I’ll just drive less.”

From Todd Spencer:

Motor homes and RVs are a big part of life up here in northern Michigan. For many, they provide a perfectly comfortable way to enjoy the nature up here.

But $4 gas has owners rethinking their dedication to the large vehicles. Motor homes range in size, of course, with gas tank size being as modest as 30 gallons to as cavernous as 100. At $4 a gallon, that’s $140 to $400 for a fill-up. Kevin Brinkerhoff, owner of TCTV in Traverse City said when asked if the price of gas is affecting his business: “It’s affecting everybody, including us.”

Brinkerhoff reports that new units are not moving like they did this time last year and that more owners of used RVs are showing up to sell back to the dealership. My neighbor across the street has his in his driveway with a homemade “for sale” sign on it.

From Joel Thurtell:

The prospect of $4-a-gallon gas has forced me to make some rough predictions about how much a long-planned family vacation in Canada will cost. We need two cars, because we have my wife, my two sons plus number one son’s girlfriend and her daughter on this trip.

It’s 1,000 miles both ways to McGregor Bay, which is in the northwest corner of Georgian Bay just off Lake Huron. The cars are a Honda Civic and Honda CR-V. I can count on at least 35 mpg with the Civic, but the CR-V will be hauling a 16 1/2-foot Crestliner aluminum fishing boat with 60 hp outboard and, of course, a trailer. Weight of boat, motor and trailer is 1,442 pounds, approaching the CR-V’s 1,500-pound limit. I made this trip in May and got about 15 mpg towing the boat. Counting gas for the two cars plus gas for the Crestliner and a Four-Winns inboard-outboard that is already up there, I’m figuring we’ll spend a bit under $600 on fuel.

Rent for the cabin my wife and I are staying in will cost $550. This came as quite a shock, as we have long been wanting to buy a cottage in this area. The long drive — about 10 hours — now adds to the high cost of fuel to make two strong arguments for buying a cottage closer to home.

I wasn’t comforted when I did the inflation calculation. My wife’s family started vacationing in McGregor Bay in 1965, when gas cost 31 cents a gallon. Corrected for inflation, that would be $2.05/gallon in 2007 currency. Forty-three years later, gas has doubled in price. That doesn’t seem that bad, come to think of it. In Germany. they’re paying $8.60 a gallon. So gas is still cheap here. It just seems more expensive to us because we had it cheap for years and suddenly the cost has gone up and we’re driving cars that get 15 mpg.

In three days, I’ll be enjoying the beautiful views in McGregor Bay, fishing for pike and hoping to find an affordable cottage in an area we’ve come to love. I figure if we had a place up there and fuel costs kept going up, I’d just stay longer periods without coming back to Michigan.

From Alexa Stanard:

The city of Royal Oak, which has faced yawning budget gaps in recent years, is “absolutely” affected by high gas prices, said Greg Rassel, director of the the city’s Department of Public Services. The department, which maintains about 200 vehicles — some of them seasonal, is looking for ways to take vehicles off the road through manpower attrition. It’s also considering alternative-fuel vehicles, Rassel said, but since much of its fleet is diesel-dependent, finding alternatives remains challenging. Winter road maintenance and fall leaf pick-up tend to be the biggest users of fuel.

The city’s 2008 budget, approved in February, used fuel-cost figures in effect at that time — about $3.85 a gallon for diesel, Rassel said. That’s up sharply from the $3.35 mark that the department began the budget year with on July 1, 2007. 

“We’re counting on efficiencies in other areas” to offset the higher costs, Rassel said.

To some extent, the city’s budget woes have blunted the impact of high fuel costs: The budget cuts have forced manpower reductions in several departments, leaving unused vehicles that can be pulled off the road.

From Minehaha Forman:

If time is money, people in Detroit would rather spend money on gas than time waiting for the bus. Here’s what some passengers had to say:

“If I had a car I’d cut back on other things to pay for gas,” said Tonya H. “I’d stop going to the movies or I’d stop buyin’ food or something.”

“Some days I’ve waited for the bus for three hours and it’s supposed to run every 45 minutes … It sucks. They never on time, they don’t go by the schedule, half the time they cheat on their route — like they get to the end and instead of coming back to where they supposed to come back they go up another street and come around and you done gone and missed the bus,” a man waiting at a bus stop said in a raised voice, very frustrated.

One unidentified passenger did think that gas prices will force people to take the bus. “When gas gets to $5, who’s gonna be payin’ that unless they got a credit card or something?” he asked.

The city of Detroit’s communications department could not be reached to respond to questions about bus riders’ complaints.

Minehaha Forman also shares the bus riding experience on video. Click here to watch.

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So, readers, how has $4 a gallon affected you? Chime in with your comments here.