Gas Price Rise Forces Adjustments

Taking a Walk, Or a Smaller Car

Liz Magruder of Columbia Heights has taken to walking in recent weeks, sometimes as much as mile, to get groceries. She also rides the bus whenever she can. Driving these days is a transportation of last resort.

The reason? Skyrocketing gas prices.

"It's ridiculous," Magruder, 49, said yesterday as she reluctantly fed her sedan $5 of gas at a station in Northwest. "You can't go anywhere; you can't do much. What's causing the gas prices to be escalating like that?"

It's a sentiment echoed at gas stations across the region, where the average price of unleaded gasoline in the DC metro area was just a penny shy of $3 a gallon yesterday, up from $2.55 a month ago, according to AAA.

In the District itself, the average price was $3.05, up from $2.64 last month.

And so, with summer vacations and road trips on the horizon but no short-term relief in sight, Washington area motorists have been forced into creative methods of coping.

George Ferner, 50, a superintendent for commercial buildings, is thinking smaller.

Instead of driving his pickup truck on the 22-mile commute from Vienna to the District, Ferner uses his 1994 Chrysler Concorde whenever he doesn't need to carry a lot of work tools around. The sedan, Ferner explained, squeezes 28 miles per gallon to the pickup's 14. Even then, he spends $60 for gas in a good week.

"I know if you go up to Pennsylvania, it's about 30 cents less. Now it's over $3 here. That's just crazy," Ferner said as he pumped gas yesterday afternoon at the BP gas station on 14th Street at Euclid Street NW. He was filling up the Chrysler.

Magruder, a child-care giver who was at the pump next to Ferner, said she had settled on the gas station after bypassing another that was charging 3 cents more per gallon.

Even then, the pump released only 1.635 gallons for her $5 before shutting off with a click.