The $4 barrier

It finally happened that I paid $4/gallon for REGULAR gas. I've been over $4/gallon for premium for a while, but had to fill up the car that takes the "cheap gas" today. It doesn't seem like that long ago we broke the $2 threshold.

That said I think higher gas prices are a good thing. While I hate to see the price of any consumable go up -- higher gas prices cost Monica and I around $1000/year which is not chump change -- my hope is that we hit the pain threshold where people change their driving behaviors.
At some point people get out of their cars and take public transit to work, move or change jobs closer to home, run fewer errands or consolidate them, or do lots of things to get cars off the road. And cars off the road and less dependence on oil is a good thing.

It's always amazing to see how a pseudo holiday reduces traffic to a non-factor. On Friday, the Friday before a three-day weekend, I hit almost no traffic going to work leaving at a time where I'd normally drive 20 MPH much of the way. If we could permanently reduce the number of cars on the road (in the Seattle area) by just 10-15%, we'd go back to rush hour and not rush hours from 7-10 and 3-7. And no one would complain about that.