Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
The New
York Times
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March 23, 2000, Thursday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section B; Page 1; Column
3; Metropolitan Desk
LENGTH: 918 words
HEADLINE: Gas Prices Are Rising, but
Not the Tempers, Yet
BYLINE: By TERRY
PRISTIN
BODY:
This is not the gasoline
shortage of the 70's.
True, the per-gallon cost has been going up so
fast that the price placards at the curb seem to flip over as fast as the
digital readout on the pump. A gallon of regular in the New York metropolitan
region cost an average of $1.44 last month, up from $1.06 last year. Prices in
the city itself are even higher. Some bus and courier companies have applied
surcharges to compensate. Some motorists are buying regular instead of premium,
or using the car only at night or taking public transportation to work. But no
one, it seems, is going out of business.
And instead of the fistfights
and fender-benders that marked the long gas lines of the early 70's, drivers are
grumbling but bearing it. After all, at least there's plenty of gas to buy.
But some people are cutting back.
Mary Szumski, a cabdriver from
Brooklyn, limits herself to $12 worth of premium at a time for her personal car,
a gas-guzzling 1981 Jaguar, and rides the bus when she goes to Manhattan to
shop. But she is not even thinking about getting a more efficient car. Like many
people, she does not expect the high prices to last more than a few months.
"It's only for a short time, so it's O.K.," she said as she pumped
$1.79-a-gallon premium gas into her tank at a station in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
"And you've got to pay it. You have no choice."
Dmitri Serebryakov, a
limousine driver from Brooklyn, said that having to pay more to fill up twice a
day "hits me right in the pocket" since he has to absorb his fuel costs. So
whenever he is in New Jersey, where gas prices are lower than in New York, he
makes a point of gassing up.
But in southern New Jersey, Ed Crane, of
Medford, said he was commuting to Philadelphia only in his Ford Taurus. "Our
other car is an S.U.V.," he said, "and we don't take that out at all these days
because of the prices."
If the spike in prices does indeed prove brief,
the local economy is not expected to suffer seriously, forecasters say. Most
expect prices to rise to as much as $2 a gallon by summer and then begin
dropping by fall.
"As long as it doesn't seem as if prices are going to
continue to go up," said David Wyss, the chief economist at the market
forecasting arm of Standard & Poor's, "we're in good shape."
Ken
Goldstein, an economist at the Conference Board, a nonprofit research
organization, said most businesses did not alter their strategy based on short
spurts of price increases. "Clearly, there are places where the impact is more
immediate," he said, "but across the board, I don't see a big, big change out
there."
Bravo Messenger Service in Teaneck, N.J., is one of the
businesses that has been seriously affected, and its customers now pay a 5
percent surcharge. "Most of them are pretty good about it," said Jeff Levy. The
higher fuel costs have actually been good for business, Mr. Levy said, because
people are more likely to consider hiring his service for office errands.
For more than a month, Essex County commuters traveling on the DeCamp
Bus Lines have been charged 30 cents more per ride because of the rise in diesel
fuel costs. But diesel prices, which are tied to the demand for home heating
oil, are beginning to decline. If that trend continues, said Gary P. Pard, a
vice president at DeCamp, the surcharge may be eliminated by April 30.
But there will be no surcharge -- or service reduction -- on buses
operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which expects to spend an
extra $9.2 million on diesel fuel this year, said Albert W. O'Leary, an
authority spokesman. Though unwelcome, the additional expense is a relatively
small part of the agency's $3 billion operating budget, he pointed out.
As for cabs, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission is in the
"initial stages" of examining whether a surcharge is warranted, said Diane
McGrath McKechnie, the commission chairwoman.
Usually, when delivery
costs go up, the prices of goods and services also go up. But John L. Wieting,
the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' regional commissioner for the New York
metropolitan region, said there was no indication that other prices were rising
-- not so far, at least. "We have yet to see a surge in prices outside the
energy sector," he said.
Mr. Wieting speculated that many businesses
might be reluctant to pass on the costs in so competitive a marketplace.
"There's a great deal of resistance on the part of consumers to higher prices,"
he said.
And there's no question that despite the robust economy, many
people will go out of their way for a bargain. The Wawa market on Route 70 and
Eayerstown Road in Medford, N.J., has been mobbed ever since a local news
program reported that it had the lowest prices in Burlington County, said Jen
Garron, the manager. "It just gets a little more hectic every day," she said.
In New York, officials said, the citywide average for a gallon of
regular gasoline is up to $1.65. But they urged consumers to shop around, since
prices vary. According to a survey by the Department of Consumer Affairs, the
Gasland station at 425 Vanderbilt Avenue on Staten Island charges $1.57 a gallon
for regular gasoline, the lowest in the city. (The highest is $1.74 at the Mobil
station at 1132 York Avenue, in Manhattan.)
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani,
who has seized on surging gas prices as a major theme for his Senate campaign,
said "ivory tower" economists have underestimated their effect.
"They
don't have to pay the bills," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Chart: "Rising Gas Prices"
The citywide
average monthly price for a gallon of regular gasoline has increased by more
than 50 cents since the beginning of 1999. The chart shows the price per gallon
of regular gasoline since January 1999. Data not available for Nov.-Dec. '99.
(Source: City Dept. of Consumer Affairs)
LOAD-DATE:
March 23, 2000 
