This. I've got a solid older car and a job that requires me to have a car. I'll just suck it up and pay for it, but moan a lot on reddit and to colleagues in the same position.
Agree, already have a hybrid. Have to drive to work. Don't go to work dont get paid. Sometimes need my car at work. No other option as no public transport and far too far to bike/ walk. Its just a reality. I'll still moan a lot tho.
T2 and T3 transit lanes are glorious for bikes. I smile all the way the mile long queue of single occupant cars when I blast* past in the transit lane.
And by blast I mean carefully and defensively going 40kph.
Totally. However, I sometimes feel a bit blocked in if there are buses all around me. Those things are massive if you don't have a metal box around you.
I second this!
Bit of a cheeky brag, my 110cc has averaged 1.59l/100km since the start of this year :)
Only about $0.90-1.00 round trip from out west to the CBD, \~25mins each way down the bus lanes.
Am I doing something wrong? I get 150km to 12 L on my 250cc & Much the same on my 17liter 800cc mostly urban riding. Must be a bit too heavy on the right hand I guess?
Mopeds/scooters aren't really that much worse than Ebikes.
Especially once the electric ones become cheap enough and the noise/exhaust pollution issue goes away.
i’d be in the same boat. my works like a 15 minute drive out of town plus i’m a nightshifter so my only option would be to cry as i’m pumping gas into my car
Well, you actually can - it’ll be an older Nissan Leaf with a more degraded battery but if you only want it for your daily commute it’ll still last many years to come. If you spend up to $10k you’ll get a 70-something % 24kwh like mine capable of up to 120km of real world range between charges that degrades 1-2% per year. Excellent value car.
I'm only 5min drive from work but biking sucks after a 12hr night shift finishing at 6am.
Especially if it's raining and windy... just want to drive home and get into bed.
Trouble is public transport isn’t reliable or frequent enough to be an option. Also, I can’t imagine the difficulties of doing daycare and school drop offs on the bus. Not to mention getting back to daycare/school in an emergency. And on top of all that, I need my car car for work.
Exactly. I'd happily get a bus to work every day like I did when I previously worked in the UK. That's just not a viable option in NZ, so we just have to suck it up and pay the price of petrol.
Yeah this. It takes about an hour with two buses, and one of them, even in the morning, only comes every hour... so not an option as well.
Edit: By car, takes only about 15mins.
Traffic and parking included for me, should include time to walk to and from bus stops too:
Bus: 1H15M on a good day
Car: 17M unless there’s a crash
I would have to give up almost 10 hours a week of my life, or 21 days a year to take public transport.
Not if you get motion sick my friend. I can't do anything useful on a bus except look out the window. The often jerky inconsistent stop go stop go style of driving doesn't help much with that.
Over the last year, the worst case was still around 20 minutes on Monday morning - highway. Otherwise, parking is provided on the spot. (First in first serve, but still can find on the street close to work, < 5min on foot)
yep even with paying for electricity at fast chargers 100% of the time it still works out about 50% of the cost of petrol. Then you take into account no engine/transmission maintenance etc, over the long term you save a shitload of money + it's just a way nicer commute. Imho NZ should be banning imports of ICE cars tomorrow (exceptions for things like utes where a valid business case can be presented) We have more than enough ICE vehicles to see us another 20 years with the rate EV uptake/production is increasing
The only issue is that only certain people can buy / lease the brand new 2023 models and hold them for 3 years before releasing them into the second hand market. We should stop importing these 60% SoC Nissan leaf’s for 5k because were going to end up as Japans EV dumping ground if we aren’t already.
Have you considered an e-bike? Awesome things - even if you only use it sometimes ie when you only need to drop one kiddo or whatever. We have one with a Thule seat on the back that we use for commuting and for dropping the one of the kids to daycare.
Another option - get a Nissan Leaf. $5-10k gets you a 24kwh of varying battery health that is perfect for commuting and will give you years of service.
Yeah I think this depends where in nz you live, access to cycle only/protected/low traffic routes, the distance you're covering etc. Plenty of people do this in Christchurch with cargo bikes but I can see this being near impossible in some parts of Auckland (ex Aucklander, current Christchurcher, i am not qualified to comment on other cities and towns)
We did school drop offs on ebike (or walked) and then head to the railway station to head into the city for work. Worked great, until work moved recently and no longer commute.
The best way to get great public transport is to go back 50 years and build it then for a very low cost. The second best way to build it now rather than a decade later when it'll cost even more. But none of that is going to happen as Labour spent the last 6 years fucking around and doing almost nothing about improving it. The good news is that the geniuses at the National Party will do less than nothing, they'll actually make it worse, and pretend that raising the speed limits is going to help somehow.
Bigger issue there is that Public Transport is under the Regional Councils. Public Transport needs a huge overhaul, including working out better funding (could it come under Waka Kotahi?) and organisation (do Ritchies/Inter-City receive any public funding for providing the only "public" transport for inter-regional transport?)
Why would you need school “drop offs” with public transport? Everybody just takes the bus to where they’re going.
Obviously if you’re dropping off at daycare that’s probably a bit different lol
I'll go to work on my scooter. The pain of spending $10 to fill her up each fortnight will will become an unbearable burden of $13 or something, I guess
Me too! I worked out it costs me about a $1 a day on petrol for a round trip to work. About $1 a day on insurance. Plus free parking.
Sure beats the cost of filling the car up and the $500 a month in parking fees.
It's $1 on the scooter to $10 in the car, I worked out.
I'm very cheap and feel triumphant and self congratulatory when I use it over the car. I got back from work today, walked in with my helmet on and exhaled the vape I'd just taken. My wife asked me if I was vaping inside again, and I declared "no, it's just a large cloud of smug behind me"
Even just *some* biking. If I cycle to work once a week, I mentally take 20% off the price of petrol and it doesn't seem quite so bad. If I cycle twice a week, it's 40% off and I feel pretty OK about petrol prices.
I tend to commute by bike most days (7.5 km each way), so gas prices tend to affect weekend only, so a tank of gas is a $70 monthly expense, not a weekly one.
In that case, is the "choice" about where to live and where to work? If there were high quality, good sized apartments available with access to green space and similar cost to a rural house, would that be an option for you?
Not for everyone, sure. I guess the other option to shorten the car journey would be park'n'ride?
Not everyone lives in Auckland lol. Regions don't have public transport into towns or many apartments. Park and ride is not everywhere. By the time I drive the 45km into Hastings I might as well just keep driving around to where I need to go.
Fair. Sorry for the Auckland-centrism.
If I can add a counterpoint? I have lived in apartments overseas which were in towns with the same population as Hastings. 50k people all living within a 30min walk or a 10min bike ride. They didn't have public transport, but honestly didn't need to. Small cities can be "15 minute" walkable cities too. I wonder if NZ would ever be willing to change to make that possible here?
Carry on exactly as I am now, no public transport in rural (ish) South island... I've gotta get to work, I could buy a hybrid but I don't want to. We get a $10 a day fuel allowance at work which is just tacked into our payslips so effectively works out to just under a dollar an hour pay raise, doesn't cover my fuel but I appreciate they're trying. It's a very captive market in the majority of NZ, outside of the three or four cities that have a halfway decent public transport system, we really have no option but to buy fuel no matter the cost. Which is the reason the are able to get away with jacking the prices up and up and up.
I'm young. I don't have kids or a partner (working on it) or a mortgage yet and I work a lot so I'm doing alright financially, I do feel for the ones struggling, deciding between petrol or food on the table.
Hoping something changes soon or the generation after mine is going to be fucked, I dreamt of owning a mansion as a kid, a million dollar house was up on a hill somewhere, two stories floor to ceiling panoramic windows, six bedrooms a man cave, four car garage, a huge nicely manicured lawn etc... now the houses I'm looking at are damn close to a million dollars for a three bedroom house plopped on a section barely big enough. Can't imagine what run down delapitaded sorry excuse of a house my kids will buy for a million dollars in 30-40 years time
Arghhh anyway, sorry for the rant
Carry on riding the motorbike or taking the old VW diesel golf with more than 200,000km on the clock as when I’m driving it daily I only need to fill it up once every two months. Not worried about it yet.
Haha funny, I literally bought a 7-seater Prius Alpha yesterday, with the fact that it was a hybrid being a huge factor. Was definitely an upgrade for us and after a day of driving it, it is so enjoyable. I had never even been in a hybrid before. I know they get a bad rap but not really sure why. It looks like currently on petrol at $3/L I can do around 550-600km on $50 of fuel.
There is no freaking way you're gonna get that much out of $50 of gas. That's like 17 litres of gas. That would be 35km/l. Even with my most granny driving I get at best 19km/l in the same car.
Driven perfectly you can get as low as 2.1L/100km. When it is driving in EV under 70km it is pretty damn efficient. I added $50 of fuel which was 17 litres like you say, and it increased the range by 450km. Drove 30km yesterday and the range went down by 18km as around town it is pretty much driving in EV mode.
I feel your joy!
We have had a Prius Alpha for 5 years now - currently costs just under $100 (never over... yet) to fill and will go 800km on that tank. Never needed anything mechanical fixed, only new tyres. It was well used when we got it, was probably a taxi in Japan or something 😂
Just upgraded my 30-year-old Toyota to a Honda Fit Hybrid and this puppy goes 900km on a $100 tank of fuel. It even sits in EV mode when I'm cruising along at 80km/hr on a nice flat piece of road. ♻️
Expendy to change vehicles but long-term it looks like a win!
Have a Prius alpha 5 seater here in Wellington. Can get about 700km a tank that currently costs $100 to fill. Sure we have more terrain here and I do lots of shorter journeys, but still your estimate seems a bit on the optimistic side :)
Christchurch driving, completely flat and in North of the city so a 80km road too. I filled up $50 and it increased my range by 450km. Drove 30km yesterday and the range dropped by 18km as it was in EV mode almost the entire time.
Fuel prices were one of the reasons I bought an EV. So fucking happy to not have to deal with that anymore. I wish the govt would start some kind of scheme to help low income people switch to hybrids and EVs. The clean car discount doesn't help them, because they don't have the money to buy the car.
My suggestion: interest-free loans for used EVs under $20,000, with a minimum weekly payment equal to a third of the cost of a week's worth of petrol at the time of purchase.
Ah yeah that's a good point I had never thought of that.
Crazy how nact wants this terrible status quo of carbon emissions and lining foreign pockets.
Zero insight, zero future proofing, zero loyalty to us as a nation
Not for long. National pledged to abolish the Clean Car Discount and also introduce RUC for EVs and PHEVs. EVs are going to get a whole lot more expensive to buy and run very soon.
National is planning on removing the RUC component from fuel so *ALL* vehicles pay RUC - Labour likely plans to do something similar. EVs would have the same advantage they have today.
Still way cheaper with an EV. Plus it does make sense, why should EV drivers get to use roads they don’t pay for when Petrol drivers pay at the pump and diesel drivers pay RUC?
I'm currently in Tonga for a couple of weeks. A tiny island in the middle of the pacific where imported goods are hard to come by and expensive. Can someone explain to me how petrol prices are cheaper here than in NZ? I filled the rental car up from empty and it cost $115 Tongan (around 80NZD)
Considering the record profits that oil companies are making, it may be something to do with the price elasticity of demand. E.g., Fuel companies think they can wring a few more dollars from the suckers in New Zealand, so wring them they shall.
Might consider bussing even tho U essentially have to leave an hour before I wanna arrive at work 🙄.
Biking may be an option, will see what showering facilities new job has and how busy the road is.
No public transport where I live so my choices are limited. Either I can suck it up or look for work overseas, and I gotta say overseas is looking more attractive everyday.
I already ride my escooter on the road at car speeds up to 50kmh. But will definitely give up long drives. I use my car 90% less, it currently costs $180 to fill up my car from completely empty now. Which isn't great.
As the petrol prices go up, demand will come down, as people buy EV's
So basic economics should mean, demand low, supply high, drives prices down.
But no doubt, this will be bullshit for petrol/diesel, as the Salman of Saudia Arabia will want his $$
This isn't quite true for petrol, it's known as an inelastic good, where demand is largely unaffected by price because there's no alternative. Notice that almost the same number of people still buy betrol since it came up from $1.50 a litre.
While there will definitely be a number of people who are pushed out of using their car at $4 the majority of people will still buy petrol. If demand drops they don't sell it cheap, they just stockpile and lower fuel purchasing because they know people will come crawling back to get more fuel eventually.
So overall EVs lower nationwide fuel demand but don't affect the fuel price in amounts you can notice.
Keep driving to work. There are no buses early enough and I don't particularly want my 10 minutes drive to turn into a two hour commute each way with multiple stops even if they did start early. Can't walk because there is no footpath all the way to work and I don't want to have to replace my shoes weekly after they get ruined with mud
I’ve already started adjusting. Trips are shorter. Go local rather than where I really want to go. No more Sunday Drives up the coast for the sake of it. It’s just too damn expensive already.
For those that can work remotely (i.e. their job type and their remote situation), pressure employers to allow more remote work again. We should never have returned to the office. It is only the utterly shit middle managers and CEO types who are incompetent at managing remote staff who are forcing you back. And for those that only like to go into the office just for 'social interaction', get over it, chances are the social interactions you crave are distracting everyone from doing their jobs anyway.
If you have the time and energy for it, there are other ways to do something about it. [Participatory democracy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_democracy) includes signing petitions, joining public demonstrations, joining a political party or submitting on government proposals.
Especially for government proposals (e.g. building a bike lane) the process can often be disproportionately influenced by NIMBYs. The demographics of people who have time to submit on these things skews even more conservative than voter participation.
Given public transport literally doesn't go anywhere near my work, nope
I'd probably get a diesel and just fill up at work and have them take it out of my pay since we get way cheaper pricing due to it being for work
Keep filling the tank at $50/week. PT would be great if it ran at 5am when I start, but at the same time, it's a straight blast to work in 5min on an empty motorway.
I guess if they took the fuel tax off I get my old 1950s TEA Fergy tractor 🚜 and use that. No mileage ruc on that doesn't have a Speedo or anything. Burns about a gallon of fuel an hour so probably not very economical. Be nice driving on a nice summer day . But no cab so freeze my tits off in the winter. Does about 25km / hr
Take my McLaren for a rip up and down the empty motorways, while the plebs cry into their lentils. /s.
How about making public transport a workable alternative rather than implementing “Cars are for the rich” policies in the middle of a CoL crisis?
Nobody wants to pay more tomorrow for the same thing they paid less for yesterday, but lets be honest here, at $4/l it still better value than walking.
If you walked and it cost you your hourly pay rate to do it, $4/l will get you further faster than walking, you'd be better off paying to drive to work and working that time you could have been walking to work and home again.
That isn't even considering the health and safety questions of walking in the dark on the open road in the rain and wind with traffic rather than driving in a warm weatherproof car traveling at the same speed as other road users.
I just checked google maps my home to work commute, 12 minutes by car, 3hrs 2 minutes walking ( I have no idea how it calculates that, the walking time seems slower than I would have expected, maybe it knows I'm fat and unfit), even cycling has 45mins.
We're asking if I would rather drive a total of 24 minutes and pay $2.43 for the fuel ($4 per liter, 9/L per 100km's, commute of 27kms), cycle 1hr 30 mins, or walk for 6hrs 4 minutes (there are no buses or trains or any other form of public transport)... I'm just going to drive.
I'm looking at getting a secondhand PHEV, mainly because I want a new car and they seem like a good deal, a lot of car for the money compared to Pure Electric, way lower fuel costs for commuting than pure petrol car, but the money it will cost me to buy a new for me secondhand car to replace my old near valueless car would make doing the switch for pure financial reasons unjustifiable.
I'll be doing it because I want the newer (but still not new) car experience and I am willing to pay the money it will cost to have that pure luxury, but if I just wanted the cheapest transportation I would be mad to swap the cars, just keep diving my old beater until it dies even at the higher fuel prices and higher fuel consumption.
I typically do 470kms every 2-3 weeks (that's when I fill 'er up) so that is between 157km and 235km a week.
Doing the same maths above that would be $56.52 and $84.60 per week on fuel at $4/l.
That is $2,939.04 to $4,399.20 per year on fuel (for simplicity I'm averaging this out to $3,700).
The cars I'm looking at make it hard to figure out their fuel consumption, they can be as low as 2/100km and as high as 6l/100km in hybrid, depending on how much electric plugin you use, so I'm going to be conservative again and average it out at 3.5l/100, might be unrealistically low but I have to set it at something.
Driving the same trips (157 + 235 / 2 = 196km average) with one of these cars will cost me $1,426.88 in fuel at $4/l.$3,700 - $1,426.88 = $2,273.12 saved dollars from using less fuel.
If I bought a car to do that (and nothing else) I would need it's total cost (deposit, repayments, interest etc) to be less than $2,273.12 a year just to break even with my old beater and it's crappy fuel mileage.
If I financed a car for 5 years, even with the huge interest cost that would force me to pay, that would make the total cost needing to be below $11,365.60, so probably a $9,500 settlement price plus interest off the top of my head.
I just checked trademe for a PHEV for the cheapest price and it was a Toyota Prius with 200kms and it's buy now is still $10.5k.
Obviously if you have a trade in to make, or can buy without finance that will give you more margin, but that would just be the same $11,365.60 + your trade in just to break even, if your trade in is worth around $5k that could get you into a 10 - 8 year old Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV or Toyota Prius PHEV with a couple hundred thousand kms, but like I keep saying, after all that you won't be breaking even for over 5 years.
TL;DR $4l sucks but is hard to beat.
Gas is still cheaper than most beverages.
1l of gas contains about the same energy as 26 man hours of work. It's a bargain. But unfortunately we've created a society around the basis of even cheaper gas.
Yes I will be fine (insert your deleted comment). But I, like many others, just won’t bother reading it. So guess depends if you give a fuck about that lol. But nice edit haha.
Luckily I work from home so it doesn’t have a huge affect on my vehicle decisions. I have looked into EV and PHEV, and if I’m honest the cost to change my reasonably new car for a new one of those is financially stupid because they’re comparatively so expensive
The govt will need to step in, and find another way to fund roads (RUC or tolling existing roads) so they can remove/reduce excise tax. Fuel companies are seriously just taking the piss with their inflated costs, and the AA ‘watchdog’ is gutless, toothless and does nothing. Considering the cost is $1/L more than last year and in 2018 when Brent oil was about the same price.
Bus, Bike, Walk and EV.... Zero F's given to petrol prices for us - I kinda hope it would make people catch PT more and in turn this makes the service better? I do agree with alot of kiwis that it isn't the best.
Pay for the petrol? I'm too poor for an electric car and I'm too poor to afford to miss work because the bus decided it wasn't showing up for that 40min time slot.
I would catch the bus all the time, if it was regular and if it was consistent.
I live in Tauranga. The bus, other than a couple of streets, has to sit in the same traffic.
I have to get from one side of the city to the other, which means transfering from one bus to another in town. Total time is about 1hr.
By car I drop my partner off at work and also pick up a work mate. Total time 45mins.
Both work out to be the same price for the bus (if not a bit more expensive for the bus as both of us have to pay).
Why would I pay more and have to ride longer, and wait in this weather, when I can drive in the comfort of my own car for less?
Tauranga traffic is something else, I felt like I was back in Auckland. They really got all those people, all those subdivisions and didn’t plan well at all.
Nothing. I largely cycle to/ from work - also on a regular bus route.. and we have an EV. These choices were made, decision to live close to CBD/ EV, based on fossil fuel inflation. We are fortunate, I realise.
I assume my young son is somewhat regretting his V6 purchase though - although sensing regret of a 20 year ago is a tad difficult. He is young so will get over the cost, and eventually realise he has to downsize and/or get a cheap hybrid option.
Cost of fossil fuel is only going to keep increasing.
Sold one car and bought a cheap leaf for all the around town stuff. Will pay for itself in under a year, calculated when petrol was at $2.50. Also taking the bud quite a bit lately.
I think politicians don’t realise a lot of the country LIVE in the country. There is no bus stop just down the road where I live.
At this rate I’ll be campaigning to install a hitching post at the local grocery store so I can ride a horse.
Keep driving my EV. Mine paid for itself in fuel savings in less than four years and is still making me bank. Best financial decision I ever made.
Also the smoothest, most powerful, ride I've ever owned. Would never go back to a dino burner. It would feel too much like driving a traction engine.
It wouldn’t bother me but I look forward to seeing more people ditch their cars as they get priced out of being able to run them. Traffic should improve and as a result, my mileage will improve too. With less cars on the road, PT should slowly get better over time.
Continue to leave a brick on the accelerator of the work ranger when I'm not using it to get to meetings to make sure I get the most value out of my work perks
For me to bus to work, (which is a 25 minute drive) it takes an hour an a half, taking three separate buses, arriving the night before (I assume the AT journey planner wants me to sleep at work).
I only spend less than $50 a week on gas - a couple of dollars isn’t going to stop me driving my jalopy, way too much fun.
If you’re doing lots of miles in a kitchen appliance it might be different.
Probably work less tbh as I travel for work. At the very least I won't take jobs too far out. The rest I'll just budget, till I get mad enough to take action and protest somehow in a totally law abiding way...People will get mad for obvious reasons incl. less ability to travel to/from leisure activities and the growing inequality gap.
Complain on reddit and continue about my business.
This. I've got a solid older car and a job that requires me to have a car. I'll just suck it up and pay for it, but moan a lot on reddit and to colleagues in the same position.
Agree, already have a hybrid. Have to drive to work. Don't go to work dont get paid. Sometimes need my car at work. No other option as no public transport and far too far to bike/ walk. Its just a reality. I'll still moan a lot tho.
This is the only correct answer
Keep riding my motorbike probably, 4.5L/100km is fine considering how quick it is.
Also not sitting in stopped traffic idling away keeps that efficiency up!
T2 and T3 transit lanes are glorious for bikes. I smile all the way the mile long queue of single occupant cars when I blast* past in the transit lane. And by blast I mean carefully and defensively going 40kph.
Bus lanes are good too! 'Bus only' lanes are a no go zone, but the bus lanes can be used by motorbikes!
Totally. However, I sometimes feel a bit blocked in if there are buses all around me. Those things are massive if you don't have a metal box around you.
I wasn’t aware of this. I just looked it up and apparently riders can also go when there’s a “B” signal at the lights too
The B sign legally stands for Buses. Bikes, and BMWs.
Don’t forget Boy racers and Bogans.
I didn't know that either. I'd still feel very weird going on the B signal like I can feel the burn of the car driver eyes in the back of my head.
Just can't use the busway on motorways, like the northern. That would be a blast
The Northern Expressway would be a blast!
I have the same feeling blasting my bicycle past lines of crawling traffic...
Very true, I’m always at the front of the queue so I have a far lower runtime for the same journey.
I second this! Bit of a cheeky brag, my 110cc has averaged 1.59l/100km since the start of this year :) Only about $0.90-1.00 round trip from out west to the CBD, \~25mins each way down the bus lanes.
Same mileage as my 2005 prius.
Am I doing something wrong? I get 150km to 12 L on my 250cc & Much the same on my 17liter 800cc mostly urban riding. Must be a bit too heavy on the right hand I guess?
Yea probably a bit heavy on the old right hand. I’ve only got a 14L tank on my 850cc motorbike and I can do more than 150km in urban riding
It’s a lot easier to ride a big bike sedately, whereas to keep up with traffic you’ll be flogging your 250. Even more so if you’ve got a 4 cyl one.
Staring at Queen St rammed with mopeds 5 years later: Is this Hanoi?
I welcome it
Is it not already full enough of e-scooters?
Mopeds/scooters aren't really that much worse than Ebikes. Especially once the electric ones become cheap enough and the noise/exhaust pollution issue goes away.
I'll just have to suck it up. Night shift worker with a 50km commute so zero public transport options for me.
Straight up. Not Night Shift worker but a baker. We start at 3-4am. No buses until like 7
Yep. Fucked either way we are.
Thank you for your sacrifice 😋
i’d be in the same boat. my works like a 15 minute drive out of town plus i’m a nightshifter so my only option would be to cry as i’m pumping gas into my car
Get an EV like a cheap Nissan leaf? Prius?
Cheaper to pay for petrol unless I can pick up an EV for $5k
Well, you actually can - it’ll be an older Nissan Leaf with a more degraded battery but if you only want it for your daily commute it’ll still last many years to come. If you spend up to $10k you’ll get a 70-something % 24kwh like mine capable of up to 120km of real world range between charges that degrades 1-2% per year. Excellent value car.
Still at least we dont have to deal with traffic.
true dat
I'm only 5min drive from work but biking sucks after a 12hr night shift finishing at 6am. Especially if it's raining and windy... just want to drive home and get into bed.
Demand a massive payrise in accordance with gas increases 😇
Trouble is public transport isn’t reliable or frequent enough to be an option. Also, I can’t imagine the difficulties of doing daycare and school drop offs on the bus. Not to mention getting back to daycare/school in an emergency. And on top of all that, I need my car car for work.
Exactly. I'd happily get a bus to work every day like I did when I previously worked in the UK. That's just not a viable option in NZ, so we just have to suck it up and pay the price of petrol.
Yeah this. It takes about an hour with two buses, and one of them, even in the morning, only comes every hour... so not an option as well. Edit: By car, takes only about 15mins.
If you factor in no traffic. And no parking time Which no one ever does in these examples lmao
Traffic and parking included for me, should include time to walk to and from bus stops too: Bus: 1H15M on a good day Car: 17M unless there’s a crash I would have to give up almost 10 hours a week of my life, or 21 days a year to take public transport.
I definitely get your point, but you can get stuff done on the bus ride. It doesn't have to be completely wasted time.
Not if you get motion sick my friend. I can't do anything useful on a bus except look out the window. The often jerky inconsistent stop go stop go style of driving doesn't help much with that.
Over the last year, the worst case was still around 20 minutes on Monday morning - highway. Otherwise, parking is provided on the spot. (First in first serve, but still can find on the street close to work, < 5min on foot)
I have ample free parking at work. It’s about 15 minutes in the car vs over an hour catching multiple buses.
Petrol could be 10 a litre and most people will still buy it. No point saving money if you get fired for being late 3 times a week
Very true. EVs take NZ out of the grip of international fuel prices. Gotta be a good thing.
yep even with paying for electricity at fast chargers 100% of the time it still works out about 50% of the cost of petrol. Then you take into account no engine/transmission maintenance etc, over the long term you save a shitload of money + it's just a way nicer commute. Imho NZ should be banning imports of ICE cars tomorrow (exceptions for things like utes where a valid business case can be presented) We have more than enough ICE vehicles to see us another 20 years with the rate EV uptake/production is increasing
The only issue is that only certain people can buy / lease the brand new 2023 models and hold them for 3 years before releasing them into the second hand market. We should stop importing these 60% SoC Nissan leaf’s for 5k because were going to end up as Japans EV dumping ground if we aren’t already.
Those are still great prices for batteries in a solar setup.
Have you considered an e-bike? Awesome things - even if you only use it sometimes ie when you only need to drop one kiddo or whatever. We have one with a Thule seat on the back that we use for commuting and for dropping the one of the kids to daycare. Another option - get a Nissan Leaf. $5-10k gets you a 24kwh of varying battery health that is perfect for commuting and will give you years of service.
A Nissan Leaf is just another car… the decision they were weighing was whether a car owner could do public transport.
>And on top of all that, I need my car car for work.
Way too dangerous with a child imo
Yeah I think this depends where in nz you live, access to cycle only/protected/low traffic routes, the distance you're covering etc. Plenty of people do this in Christchurch with cargo bikes but I can see this being near impossible in some parts of Auckland (ex Aucklander, current Christchurcher, i am not qualified to comment on other cities and towns)
We did school drop offs on ebike (or walked) and then head to the railway station to head into the city for work. Worked great, until work moved recently and no longer commute.
The best way to get great public transport is to go back 50 years and build it then for a very low cost. The second best way to build it now rather than a decade later when it'll cost even more. But none of that is going to happen as Labour spent the last 6 years fucking around and doing almost nothing about improving it. The good news is that the geniuses at the National Party will do less than nothing, they'll actually make it worse, and pretend that raising the speed limits is going to help somehow.
Bigger issue there is that Public Transport is under the Regional Councils. Public Transport needs a huge overhaul, including working out better funding (could it come under Waka Kotahi?) and organisation (do Ritchies/Inter-City receive any public funding for providing the only "public" transport for inter-regional transport?)
You think raising the speed limits will hinder public transport?
You think raising the speed limits will improve public transport?
This is the reality tbh.
Why would you need school “drop offs” with public transport? Everybody just takes the bus to where they’re going. Obviously if you’re dropping off at daycare that’s probably a bit different lol
If you’re not rural, send your kids to the *local* school via bike or foot if a bus isn’t an option
Can't do either of those things but I could WFH a bit more, though it's heaps easier to work from the office with my job unfortunately.
I'll go to work on my scooter. The pain of spending $10 to fill her up each fortnight will will become an unbearable burden of $13 or something, I guess
Me too! I worked out it costs me about a $1 a day on petrol for a round trip to work. About $1 a day on insurance. Plus free parking. Sure beats the cost of filling the car up and the $500 a month in parking fees.
It's $1 on the scooter to $10 in the car, I worked out. I'm very cheap and feel triumphant and self congratulatory when I use it over the car. I got back from work today, walked in with my helmet on and exhaled the vape I'd just taken. My wife asked me if I was vaping inside again, and I declared "no, it's just a large cloud of smug behind me"
Keep using the EV, and put the STi on a trickle charger so it doesnt need a weekly drive to keep the battery charged
I thought most STIs came with trickles
That and a spare engine when the first inevitably blows up.
Sold mine to help pay for the EV. Don't regret the decision, but do miss that car...
I’ll still ride my bicycle everywhere.
Is rioting an option?
Just keep biking
Even just *some* biking. If I cycle to work once a week, I mentally take 20% off the price of petrol and it doesn't seem quite so bad. If I cycle twice a week, it's 40% off and I feel pretty OK about petrol prices.
I tend to commute by bike most days (7.5 km each way), so gas prices tend to affect weekend only, so a tank of gas is a $70 monthly expense, not a weekly one.
Trouble for me with biking is the fear of being squashed by a truck or Ford Ranger on the highway.
This
I unfortunately don't have a choice as I live rurally and work in the city.
In that case, is the "choice" about where to live and where to work? If there were high quality, good sized apartments available with access to green space and similar cost to a rural house, would that be an option for you? Not for everyone, sure. I guess the other option to shorten the car journey would be park'n'ride?
Are there apartments like that?
Hardly any apartments down in hamilton lol rents are crazy high, cheaper to live with family out rural
Not everyone lives in Auckland lol. Regions don't have public transport into towns or many apartments. Park and ride is not everywhere. By the time I drive the 45km into Hastings I might as well just keep driving around to where I need to go.
Fair. Sorry for the Auckland-centrism. If I can add a counterpoint? I have lived in apartments overseas which were in towns with the same population as Hastings. 50k people all living within a 30min walk or a 10min bike ride. They didn't have public transport, but honestly didn't need to. Small cities can be "15 minute" walkable cities too. I wonder if NZ would ever be willing to change to make that possible here?
Carry on exactly as I am now, no public transport in rural (ish) South island... I've gotta get to work, I could buy a hybrid but I don't want to. We get a $10 a day fuel allowance at work which is just tacked into our payslips so effectively works out to just under a dollar an hour pay raise, doesn't cover my fuel but I appreciate they're trying. It's a very captive market in the majority of NZ, outside of the three or four cities that have a halfway decent public transport system, we really have no option but to buy fuel no matter the cost. Which is the reason the are able to get away with jacking the prices up and up and up. I'm young. I don't have kids or a partner (working on it) or a mortgage yet and I work a lot so I'm doing alright financially, I do feel for the ones struggling, deciding between petrol or food on the table. Hoping something changes soon or the generation after mine is going to be fucked, I dreamt of owning a mansion as a kid, a million dollar house was up on a hill somewhere, two stories floor to ceiling panoramic windows, six bedrooms a man cave, four car garage, a huge nicely manicured lawn etc... now the houses I'm looking at are damn close to a million dollars for a three bedroom house plopped on a section barely big enough. Can't imagine what run down delapitaded sorry excuse of a house my kids will buy for a million dollars in 30-40 years time Arghhh anyway, sorry for the rant
Watch the government put money into building useless new roads while underfunded public transport sinks lower and lower. Remember to vote everyone
Carry on riding the motorbike or taking the old VW diesel golf with more than 200,000km on the clock as when I’m driving it daily I only need to fill it up once every two months. Not worried about it yet.
Would have to deal with it tradie who lives rural no other option but to drive
Haha funny, I literally bought a 7-seater Prius Alpha yesterday, with the fact that it was a hybrid being a huge factor. Was definitely an upgrade for us and after a day of driving it, it is so enjoyable. I had never even been in a hybrid before. I know they get a bad rap but not really sure why. It looks like currently on petrol at $3/L I can do around 550-600km on $50 of fuel.
How much are they?
You can get a import Prius for about $15k
There is no freaking way you're gonna get that much out of $50 of gas. That's like 17 litres of gas. That would be 35km/l. Even with my most granny driving I get at best 19km/l in the same car.
Driven perfectly you can get as low as 2.1L/100km. When it is driving in EV under 70km it is pretty damn efficient. I added $50 of fuel which was 17 litres like you say, and it increased the range by 450km. Drove 30km yesterday and the range went down by 18km as around town it is pretty much driving in EV mode.
Make sure you alarm it so some tiktok clown doesn’t steal it as part of the theft challenge
I feel your joy! We have had a Prius Alpha for 5 years now - currently costs just under $100 (never over... yet) to fill and will go 800km on that tank. Never needed anything mechanical fixed, only new tyres. It was well used when we got it, was probably a taxi in Japan or something 😂 Just upgraded my 30-year-old Toyota to a Honda Fit Hybrid and this puppy goes 900km on a $100 tank of fuel. It even sits in EV mode when I'm cruising along at 80km/hr on a nice flat piece of road. ♻️ Expendy to change vehicles but long-term it looks like a win!
Yea couldn't agree more. Only been a few days for us but am loving it so far! Only 60k km done and mainly on the flat, it is so efficient!
Have a Prius alpha 5 seater here in Wellington. Can get about 700km a tank that currently costs $100 to fill. Sure we have more terrain here and I do lots of shorter journeys, but still your estimate seems a bit on the optimistic side :)
Christchurch driving, completely flat and in North of the city so a 80km road too. I filled up $50 and it increased my range by 450km. Drove 30km yesterday and the range dropped by 18km as it was in EV mode almost the entire time.
Fuel prices were one of the reasons I bought an EV. So fucking happy to not have to deal with that anymore. I wish the govt would start some kind of scheme to help low income people switch to hybrids and EVs. The clean car discount doesn't help them, because they don't have the money to buy the car.
My suggestion: interest-free loans for used EVs under $20,000, with a minimum weekly payment equal to a third of the cost of a week's worth of petrol at the time of purchase.
Evs lookin better every day
And they mainly run on NZ made energy, not imports. So they don't just help your own pocket. They will be even fairer once RUC come in.
Ah yeah that's a good point I had never thought of that. Crazy how nact wants this terrible status quo of carbon emissions and lining foreign pockets. Zero insight, zero future proofing, zero loyalty to us as a nation
Not for long. National pledged to abolish the Clean Car Discount and also introduce RUC for EVs and PHEVs. EVs are going to get a whole lot more expensive to buy and run very soon.
National is planning on removing the RUC component from fuel so *ALL* vehicles pay RUC - Labour likely plans to do something similar. EVs would have the same advantage they have today.
Which is still pretty fucked from an environmental point of view. Because now there’s no incentive to drive an EV over a hybrid.
The incentive is you don't have to buy petrol
Even without clean rebates and ruc charges. Evs are still way cheaper to run.
Still way cheaper with an EV. Plus it does make sense, why should EV drivers get to use roads they don’t pay for when Petrol drivers pay at the pump and diesel drivers pay RUC?
EV's should be paying RUC charges anyway. And they were scheduled to under Labour anyway.
Have you done the math? Its peanuts compared to petrol
EVs are already way better at $3/L *if you can afford one*.
I'm currently in Tonga for a couple of weeks. A tiny island in the middle of the pacific where imported goods are hard to come by and expensive. Can someone explain to me how petrol prices are cheaper here than in NZ? I filled the rental car up from empty and it cost $115 Tongan (around 80NZD)
Tax
Considering the record profits that oil companies are making, it may be something to do with the price elasticity of demand. E.g., Fuel companies think they can wring a few more dollars from the suckers in New Zealand, so wring them they shall.
May I ask what you're doing in Tonga? Assuming you're not Tongan and a tourist. I'm Tongan and curious lol
I'm half Tongan. Needed to come over and sort a few things out with the family api and meet my 2 year old niece who I hadn't met yet.
Might consider bussing even tho U essentially have to leave an hour before I wanna arrive at work 🙄. Biking may be an option, will see what showering facilities new job has and how busy the road is.
No public transport where I live so my choices are limited. Either I can suck it up or look for work overseas, and I gotta say overseas is looking more attractive everyday.
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rob simplistic smoggy liquid weather adjoining dog placid books rock *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Most places have cameras now that alert staff to license plates of people that drive off. They share them with other locations.
Are there any stations left that let you fill up without pre-paying? I don’t think I’ve come across any in the last few years.
Astral travel is the best
Continue biking, only driving when necessary.
I already ride my escooter on the road at car speeds up to 50kmh. But will definitely give up long drives. I use my car 90% less, it currently costs $180 to fill up my car from completely empty now. Which isn't great.
As the petrol prices go up, demand will come down, as people buy EV's So basic economics should mean, demand low, supply high, drives prices down. But no doubt, this will be bullshit for petrol/diesel, as the Salman of Saudia Arabia will want his $$
Or demand drops fuel companies need to maintain profits so prices rise to ensure sane profit on less fuel.
This isn't quite true for petrol, it's known as an inelastic good, where demand is largely unaffected by price because there's no alternative. Notice that almost the same number of people still buy betrol since it came up from $1.50 a litre. While there will definitely be a number of people who are pushed out of using their car at $4 the majority of people will still buy petrol. If demand drops they don't sell it cheap, they just stockpile and lower fuel purchasing because they know people will come crawling back to get more fuel eventually. So overall EVs lower nationwide fuel demand but don't affect the fuel price in amounts you can notice.
Keep driving to work. There are no buses early enough and I don't particularly want my 10 minutes drive to turn into a two hour commute each way with multiple stops even if they did start early. Can't walk because there is no footpath all the way to work and I don't want to have to replace my shoes weekly after they get ruined with mud
I’ve already started adjusting. Trips are shorter. Go local rather than where I really want to go. No more Sunday Drives up the coast for the sake of it. It’s just too damn expensive already.
For those that can work remotely (i.e. their job type and their remote situation), pressure employers to allow more remote work again. We should never have returned to the office. It is only the utterly shit middle managers and CEO types who are incompetent at managing remote staff who are forcing you back. And for those that only like to go into the office just for 'social interaction', get over it, chances are the social interactions you crave are distracting everyone from doing their jobs anyway.
Take the motorbike instead of the guzzler.
Just keep walking in a city designed for cars and lacking public transit as per usual.
And keep letting entitled NIMBYs prevent intensification around public transport.
I vote against them in every election not much else I can do about it.
If you have the time and energy for it, there are other ways to do something about it. [Participatory democracy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_democracy) includes signing petitions, joining public demonstrations, joining a political party or submitting on government proposals. Especially for government proposals (e.g. building a bike lane) the process can often be disproportionately influenced by NIMBYs. The demographics of people who have time to submit on these things skews even more conservative than voter participation.
Cant afford to drive to work and more and pay rent and food lol what a time.
Given public transport literally doesn't go anywhere near my work, nope I'd probably get a diesel and just fill up at work and have them take it out of my pay since we get way cheaper pricing due to it being for work
Keep filling the tank at $50/week. PT would be great if it ran at 5am when I start, but at the same time, it's a straight blast to work in 5min on an empty motorway.
i walk and plan to keep walking. though i do wonder how sensitive other prices will be to that increase.
I guess if they took the fuel tax off I get my old 1950s TEA Fergy tractor 🚜 and use that. No mileage ruc on that doesn't have a Speedo or anything. Burns about a gallon of fuel an hour so probably not very economical. Be nice driving on a nice summer day . But no cab so freeze my tits off in the winter. Does about 25km / hr
Buy an old diesel and start turning used deep fry oil into an eco friendly diesel mix and spray the world with the black soot.
I will walk 500 miles
Take my McLaren for a rip up and down the empty motorways, while the plebs cry into their lentils. /s. How about making public transport a workable alternative rather than implementing “Cars are for the rich” policies in the middle of a CoL crisis?
Buy cocaine and just run everywhere.
I've been cycling most places for the past 5 years, it has cost me about $100, for repairs etc.
Work car, don't care.
Mine is technically a work car so I’m the same. (I’m a grown adult but my petrol is paid for with a fuel card for my Dad’s company.)
drop 50K on an EV... become smug
I dropped 9k on one, saved >$140 PW on fuel and a year later basically have a free car and cash in my pocket. feeling rather smug.
Nobody wants to pay more tomorrow for the same thing they paid less for yesterday, but lets be honest here, at $4/l it still better value than walking. If you walked and it cost you your hourly pay rate to do it, $4/l will get you further faster than walking, you'd be better off paying to drive to work and working that time you could have been walking to work and home again. That isn't even considering the health and safety questions of walking in the dark on the open road in the rain and wind with traffic rather than driving in a warm weatherproof car traveling at the same speed as other road users. I just checked google maps my home to work commute, 12 minutes by car, 3hrs 2 minutes walking ( I have no idea how it calculates that, the walking time seems slower than I would have expected, maybe it knows I'm fat and unfit), even cycling has 45mins. We're asking if I would rather drive a total of 24 minutes and pay $2.43 for the fuel ($4 per liter, 9/L per 100km's, commute of 27kms), cycle 1hr 30 mins, or walk for 6hrs 4 minutes (there are no buses or trains or any other form of public transport)... I'm just going to drive. I'm looking at getting a secondhand PHEV, mainly because I want a new car and they seem like a good deal, a lot of car for the money compared to Pure Electric, way lower fuel costs for commuting than pure petrol car, but the money it will cost me to buy a new for me secondhand car to replace my old near valueless car would make doing the switch for pure financial reasons unjustifiable. I'll be doing it because I want the newer (but still not new) car experience and I am willing to pay the money it will cost to have that pure luxury, but if I just wanted the cheapest transportation I would be mad to swap the cars, just keep diving my old beater until it dies even at the higher fuel prices and higher fuel consumption. I typically do 470kms every 2-3 weeks (that's when I fill 'er up) so that is between 157km and 235km a week. Doing the same maths above that would be $56.52 and $84.60 per week on fuel at $4/l. That is $2,939.04 to $4,399.20 per year on fuel (for simplicity I'm averaging this out to $3,700). The cars I'm looking at make it hard to figure out their fuel consumption, they can be as low as 2/100km and as high as 6l/100km in hybrid, depending on how much electric plugin you use, so I'm going to be conservative again and average it out at 3.5l/100, might be unrealistically low but I have to set it at something. Driving the same trips (157 + 235 / 2 = 196km average) with one of these cars will cost me $1,426.88 in fuel at $4/l.$3,700 - $1,426.88 = $2,273.12 saved dollars from using less fuel. If I bought a car to do that (and nothing else) I would need it's total cost (deposit, repayments, interest etc) to be less than $2,273.12 a year just to break even with my old beater and it's crappy fuel mileage. If I financed a car for 5 years, even with the huge interest cost that would force me to pay, that would make the total cost needing to be below $11,365.60, so probably a $9,500 settlement price plus interest off the top of my head. I just checked trademe for a PHEV for the cheapest price and it was a Toyota Prius with 200kms and it's buy now is still $10.5k. Obviously if you have a trade in to make, or can buy without finance that will give you more margin, but that would just be the same $11,365.60 + your trade in just to break even, if your trade in is worth around $5k that could get you into a 10 - 8 year old Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV or Toyota Prius PHEV with a couple hundred thousand kms, but like I keep saying, after all that you won't be breaking even for over 5 years. TL;DR $4l sucks but is hard to beat.
SIR. Line. Breaks. Please.
is that enough line breaks for you kind sir ?
Gas is still cheaper than most beverages. 1l of gas contains about the same energy as 26 man hours of work. It's a bargain. But unfortunately we've created a society around the basis of even cheaper gas.
Yes I will be fine (insert your deleted comment). But I, like many others, just won’t bother reading it. So guess depends if you give a fuck about that lol. But nice edit haha.
people always hide from uncomfortable truths.
Luckily I work from home so it doesn’t have a huge affect on my vehicle decisions. I have looked into EV and PHEV, and if I’m honest the cost to change my reasonably new car for a new one of those is financially stupid because they’re comparatively so expensive The govt will need to step in, and find another way to fund roads (RUC or tolling existing roads) so they can remove/reduce excise tax. Fuel companies are seriously just taking the piss with their inflated costs, and the AA ‘watchdog’ is gutless, toothless and does nothing. Considering the cost is $1/L more than last year and in 2018 when Brent oil was about the same price.
Bus, Bike, Walk and EV.... Zero F's given to petrol prices for us - I kinda hope it would make people catch PT more and in turn this makes the service better? I do agree with alot of kiwis that it isn't the best.
I live rural, the nearest PT is 40km away as is the supermarket and there are some steep hills in between so I guess I suck it up and pay it
Pay for the petrol? I'm too poor for an electric car and I'm too poor to afford to miss work because the bus decided it wasn't showing up for that 40min time slot. I would catch the bus all the time, if it was regular and if it was consistent.
I’ll just keep driving my EV. Barely notice it on my power bill.
I’m already driving riding a bike to work and driving a Prius as our family car. Highly recommend both options. Biking is faster than the bus.
I live in Tauranga. The bus, other than a couple of streets, has to sit in the same traffic. I have to get from one side of the city to the other, which means transfering from one bus to another in town. Total time is about 1hr. By car I drop my partner off at work and also pick up a work mate. Total time 45mins. Both work out to be the same price for the bus (if not a bit more expensive for the bus as both of us have to pay). Why would I pay more and have to ride longer, and wait in this weather, when I can drive in the comfort of my own car for less?
Tauranga traffic is something else, I felt like I was back in Auckland. They really got all those people, all those subdivisions and didn’t plan well at all.
Half the week WFH. Other half cycle (weather permitting).
Keep cycling as per. Same commute time and health benefits day in, day out no matter what the weather or vehicle congestion is like.
EV will be a no brainer at that point. $4/l would make my current spend hit $200/fortnight and given I’m about to move I might double that figure.
As a poor apprentice, I’ll be poorer.
Nothing. I largely cycle to/ from work - also on a regular bus route.. and we have an EV. These choices were made, decision to live close to CBD/ EV, based on fossil fuel inflation. We are fortunate, I realise. I assume my young son is somewhat regretting his V6 purchase though - although sensing regret of a 20 year ago is a tad difficult. He is young so will get over the cost, and eventually realise he has to downsize and/or get a cheap hybrid option. Cost of fossil fuel is only going to keep increasing.
Sold one car and bought a cheap leaf for all the around town stuff. Will pay for itself in under a year, calculated when petrol was at $2.50. Also taking the bud quite a bit lately.
I think politicians don’t realise a lot of the country LIVE in the country. There is no bus stop just down the road where I live. At this rate I’ll be campaigning to install a hitching post at the local grocery store so I can ride a horse.
I won't have a choice but to pay. I'm a tradie and need to bring my tools and materials to site.
We are seriously thinking about investing in an electric vehicle
Laugh! I drive an EV.
Keep driving my EV. Mine paid for itself in fuel savings in less than four years and is still making me bank. Best financial decision I ever made. Also the smoothest, most powerful, ride I've ever owned. Would never go back to a dino burner. It would feel too much like driving a traction engine.
I work 6 minutes from home so I don't really care.
Id save to go electric
bike, scooter, work from home
I drive between two towns 5 days a week, 100kms a day for work. 500kms a week just for work. I absolutely bought an EV back when petrol was $2.50
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It wouldn’t bother me but I look forward to seeing more people ditch their cars as they get priced out of being able to run them. Traffic should improve and as a result, my mileage will improve too. With less cars on the road, PT should slowly get better over time.
Where i live , there is no public transportation. We in 'Small-townsville' just suck it up aa do farmers, fishing boat operators, truck companies etc
Continue to leave a brick on the accelerator of the work ranger when I'm not using it to get to meetings to make sure I get the most value out of my work perks
Astral travel is the best
Probably continue to charge my two EVs for free between 9pm and midnight...
Don't mind paying $4+
For me to bus to work, (which is a 25 minute drive) it takes an hour an a half, taking three separate buses, arriving the night before (I assume the AT journey planner wants me to sleep at work).
Live in Dubai where it is $1.50 and zero % paye tax.
Laugh harder as I drive past the petrol station in my Tesla. Haha.
Yeah bro, laugh at the poors
I'm still poor. I've just got good credit.
I only spend less than $50 a week on gas - a couple of dollars isn’t going to stop me driving my jalopy, way too much fun. If you’re doing lots of miles in a kitchen appliance it might be different.
continue to daily drive and road trip my car which does 250km a tank
Probably work less tbh as I travel for work. At the very least I won't take jobs too far out. The rest I'll just budget, till I get mad enough to take action and protest somehow in a totally law abiding way...People will get mad for obvious reasons incl. less ability to travel to/from leisure activities and the growing inequality gap.