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Apr 30, 2008 6:44 pm US/Eastern
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Gas Price Madness Consumes Westchester
Average Price Jumps To $3.86, Up 10 Percent In 2 Weeks
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
Your eyes don't deceive you. It's $4.11 per gallon for self serve gas – regular unleaded – at a Shell Station in Elmsford, up 12 cents from Tuesday's price of $3.99.
As far as consumers are concerned, it's pick your pejorative to describe the pain at the pump.
"Disgusting!" and "It's crazy!" were just two of the responses CBS 2 HD got from consumers on Wednesday.
Crazy perhaps, but also convenient for driver Sapara Grant, who gassed up at the Shell even though fuel is 23 cents cheaper per gallon at an Exxon a half-mile away.
"I want to get on the highway and get to work," Grant said. "Yes I am (pressed for time)."
Shell station manager Renee Manderson said she feels terrible about the whole thing.
"I have really reliable customers that come here every day and it disheartens me to change my prices and they suffer for that," Manderson said.
Manderson said her business has suffered too. Traffic is down outside – and in – with fewer people stopping in for drinks and snacks.
"I'm feeling it at the pump and inside my store as well," Manderson said.
Station owners and managers say their profit margins don't go up when prices do – and prices have been soaring.
Two weeks ago a gallon of self-serve regular averaged $3.52 in Westchester County. This week, the average jumped to $386 per gallon, a 9.6 percent increase in just two weeks.
Driver Ellen Ottoson lives on a fixed income and pretty much summed up the price of gas.
"It kills you," she said. "What you normally would spend on groceries or to treat the children, you can't, because you don't have it."
Gas is topping $4 per gallon across the northern suburbs, in Greenwich, Conn., in Orange County and Rockland County. In response, Republicans in the New York State Legislature want to slash gas taxes during the summer months. They say that could save drivers as much as 33 cents per gallon, but critics say it hasn't worked that way in states that have tried it.
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