Soaring Gas Prices with No End in Sight

Last week, for the first time in my life, I was obliged to pay over $4.00 a gallon for gasoline. Not a happy milestone, to be sure, but since so much has been made about that $4.00 mark, I thought I'd been fairly fortunate to hold off paying that much for so long. (It helped that I drive a reasonably sized car that doesn't require the highest grade gasoline.) I grudgingly forked over $50 to fill up my tank and naively thought, "Well, it can't get much worse than this." I mean, all we've been hearing about with regards to gas is this dreaded $4.00 per gallon average. Perhaps I've been out of it (I admittedly don't follow the news very closely), but I haven't heard anything about hitting the $5.00 mark.

To my consternation, the price of gas has ballooned over 30 cents a gallon in the past week. Hitting the $5.00 mark looms quite near for people whose cars require premium gasoline (not to mention those who live in the Bay Area). Why oh why aren't alternate-fuel vehicles already an everyday reality? I wonder when electric and hydrogen-cell cars will become viable in terms of economics and practicality... A more extended and efficient public transportation system would be nice too... I mean, LA must be one of the few major metropolises without an extensive metro/subway system. Sigh.