Today’s fuel price musings - Not much to see here
March 25th, 2008 at 05:42pm Thomas V. Bona
A boring day at the pump, but no news is good news (data courtesy of AAA’s fuelgaugereport.com):
Gasoline: Rockford’s prices didn’t move an inch, staying at $3.33 a gallon. Quad Cities jumped past us into second place at $3.34 a gallon, and the prices in other metro areas generally didn’t move much. The state average dropped half a cent and stands at $3.35 a gallon. The national average is at $3.26 a gallon, down half a cent from yesterday. Illinois is tied for the 9th-highest gas prices in the country. I told you there wasn’t much going on.
Diesel: Rockford dropped almost three cents to $4.09. We slipped behind Decatur (just over $4.09) into fifth place for diesel prices in Illinois. The state as whole backed off its record pace, dropping a penny to $4.15 a gallon today. East St. Louis and Quincy both slipped to slightly below $4 a gallon, and wouldn’t it be lovely if we could join them? Not likely, the national average is still at $4.03, down only a fraction of a cent. Illinois has the 10th-highest prices in the country.
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2 Comments Add your own
1. Brian Barnes | March 26th, 2008 at 6:51 am
I have to ask, why are the gas prices in the Rockford, Freeport area so much higher than other areas? Go to Monroe or Broadhead, 3.25. Go to Chicago, 3.28. Go to Detroit 3.22. In Freeport 3.37 and Rockford 3.34.
2. Thomas V. Bona | March 26th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Mr. Barnes,
Thanks for taking the time to write. I’m curious - are all those prices from the same day? I’m looking at IllinoisGasPrices.com, another site I use, and they show Freeport prices at $3.25 to $3.33, while Rockford tends to run $3.25 to $3.36 (with one outlier on each end of the spectrum). Chicago, in comparison, starts in the $3.30s and heads up to the $3.60s. With prices fluctuated as they do, there will be times where the Chicago suburbs will dip or rise ahead of the Rockford area, and you can always find individual stations that will have prices out of sync at a given moment. But generally, the Rockford area is cheaper than Chicago, though not always cheaper than parts of the western suburbs.
As for the Wisconsin prices - Wisconsin as at least a 6.5 cent on average lower tax rate than Illinois. But Illinois’ gas tax is a rare percentage rate as opposed to the flat tax in Wisconsin … the higher prices go, the higher the tax is, increasing the disparity. Also, Illinois allows local taxes on gas, while Wisconsin doesn’t.
A similar dynamic is in Detroit - We have a 3.5 cent difference in tax rates, plus the above notes. And Michigan has been lower than Illinois in general for the past year, not just Rockford.
Let me know if you have further questions.
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