EXTRA: Gas prices on the rise. So are the level of complaints we’re hearing

Just a thought as far as people complaining about the price of gasoline going up these days on account of the increase in the state of Illinois’ motor fuel tax.

Remember when gas prices soared this high in Chicago?

Yes, it costs less in surrounding states, which could make for an advantage if one happens to be in a bordering region at the time they need to make a automotive fuel purchase.

SUCH AS MY own circumstance earlier this week when I happened to be in Gary, Ind., and encountered a Mobil gas station charging $2.69 per gallon of gas. Other stations I witnessed in the land of Hoosiers had gas prices ranging from $2.79 to $2.95.

Yet the moment I came back to the land of civilization, the cheapest gas prices I saw were around $3.19 – with motor fuel at name-brand stations costing potentially $3.30 per gallon. With the additional cost that gas usually incurs in Chicago proper, the cost goes up further.

With the gaspricewatch.com website indicating Thursday that gas prices in the city topped at $3.45 per gallon. Much higher than the national average of $2.81 per gallon.

So excuse me (think Steve Martin in the white suit with arrow through his head) if I’m not overly swayed by a story published in the State Journal-Register of Springfield (which the newspaper picked up from the Register-Star newspaper of Rockford) that says prices on the Illinois side of the Illinois-Wisconsin border are now out of control.

An outrage? Not necessarily

THE PAPERS INDICATE gas prices at $2.78 per gallon at stations in Illinois, compared to $2.61 per gallon just north of the state line in Wisconsin.

My point is there are more drastic price differentials than what this paper is trying to pursue as evidence of an outrage. Things are worse elsewhere.

And as far as my own situation, I don’t know I’m willing to make the trip to Gary every time I need to fuel an automobile. It was a circumstance that benefitted me that one day.

Now if it turns out that the gas tax revenue increase does NOT benefit all the road repairs and other projects that the state of Illinois alleges the money will go do, THEN we can rant and rage. Until then, those of us with complaints ought to quit showing that we’re more full of gas than our cars.

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The latest urban vs. rural spat – how fast can Chicago-area motorists drive?

It has been more than a decade since I regularly rode the interstates between Springfield and Chicago. Yet one of my lasting memories of the three-hour drive each way was that moment when I entered the greater Chicago area.

QUINN: Squabbling over speed

It was the point in Will County when the landscape went from rural to suburban – and the speed limits suddenly dropped (if driving toward Chicago) from 65 miles an hour down to 55.

IT WAS JUST a given that when the state of Illinois increased the speed limits from the traditional 55 mph (and telephone calls used to cost a dime) to 65, the higher limit only applied to the portions of interstate highways that were in rural parts of the state.

The areas where there wasn’t as much traffic – or what traffic there was merely passed through the area without making stops – were allowed to drive at the faster rate.

It also meant that someone could literally go from doing the speed limit to exceeding it by 10 miles an hour – and could get a ticket for speeding if an Illinois state trooper just happened to be in the area.

If anything, the fact that troopers liked to hang out in the area to bolster their traffic citations issued was the sudden warning that one had to slow down their vehicles to accommodate the slower speed limit meant for urban areas.

BUT THINGS COULD change. Or maybe not. We’re going to see in coming weeks what will become of our interstate speed limits.

For Gov. Pat Quinn this week signed into law a measure that boosts the speed limit to 70 miles an hour – although only on the rural portions of interstate highways. To listen to Quinn, the speed limit remains 55 on urban and suburban-area highways.

Although in what has become the latest urban/rural political spat, we have the state legislator who crafted the increase (state Sen. James Oberweis, R-Sugar Grove) claiming he meant for the change in law to be truly statewide.

OBERWEIS: Statewide attention?

A sudden surge from 55 to 70 – once the new law takes effect Jan. 1.

THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES reported that the new law may bolster the speed limit on all parts of the interstates in Illinois. But it also cited an “opt-out” provision that allows officials in the urban-area counties (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will) to exclude themselves from a 70 mile-an-hour speed limit.

Although there are those officials who think that that counties don’t have jurisdiction over interstates, no matter what any opt-out provision says. There also seems to be confusion amongst county officials as to just what the law says.

Nobody seems to know what the new law says. Which could make the whole concept so confusing that it can’t even stand up in court. Who knows what will happen?

Although the idea that drivers need to slow up their vehicles once they get into the Chicago area is such an entrenched concept in Illinois that the Quinn interpretation of the law is the one that is consistent with the way things are done in Lincoln’s land.

UNLESS THE TRUE intent of this new law was a desire to force some rural standard down the collective throat of the state’s urban majority. In which case, it is nothing more than a politically partisan stunt.

There is, of course, the bottom line that makes the idea of legally whizzing through Chicago at 70 miles an hour nothing more than a fantasy.

With the way Chicago roads are perpetually under construction and repair, there’s just no way anyone is going to seriously get their cars going anywhere near 70. If anything, their cars will creep along at 20 miles an hour while he drivers see the speed limit signs and dream about getting up to 55 – let alone 70.

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Did we set a record for snow?

This weather soon history. Photo by Gregory Tejeda

I despise the slop of snowfall as much as anyone else does.

Yet I can’t get myself all excited about the fact that we likely broke a record for the most days in the Chicago area without any measurable snowfall.

IT SEEMS THAT when we went without snow on Sunday, it was the 280^th consecutive day without any of Suzy Snowflake’s friends paying us a visit. That tied the old mark set back in 1994.

When Monday turned out to be nothing more than a foggy, overcast day with only limited flakes (less than 1/10^th of an inch of snow), 2012 went into the record books.

Yet what does it really mean?

Think about it; 280 days is just barely over nine months. Which means we made it through the spring, summer and autumn months without any snowfall. Isn’t that the way things are supposed to be?

I CAN’T GET all excited, particularly since it seems it’s just a matter of days before we get the first snowfall of this winter season (even if winter proper doesn’t begin until Dec. 21).

I also see those weather reports from the weekend that show how Minneapolis got whomped this weekend (almost as bad as the Chicago Bears got beat), and how heavy snowfall is moving through Wisconsin and Michigan.

How long until it dips down and pays Illinois a visit?

I just don’t see that we have really accomplished much of anything. The “record” for the longest time period without a snowfall in Chicago strikes me as being the equivalent of those sports broadcasters who tell us a hitter’s batting average against left-handed pitchers during Tuesdays in August.

THE SIMPLE FACT is that we’re in December, and it’s going to snow soon. Hopefully, it won’t be one of those heavy storms that shuts the city down – although it is inevitable that we’re going to get hit with one of those in coming months.

We’re in the Midwestern U.S. It snows here. That’s just fact.

There’s also another reason why I can’t get into the spirit of us having had a record-length period of time without any snowfall – it wasn’t that long ago that we had that storm of historic proportions.

You remember February of 2011. You remember Lake Shore Drive being totally covered and shut down for a time. I remember feeling fortunate that I do much of my income-earning work from home, because I wouldn’t have been able to make it to any traditional workplace for a couple of days.

IN FACT, THE memories are still vivid of having to go outside with a shovel and dig my brother’s car out, because he was trying to drive back home and it got stuck in a snowdrift about a half-block from his residence.

It helped that a pair of our neighbors saw our plight and came out with their own shovels. My brother eventually was able to drive to the residence and park his car – at which point he then came inside and passed out in his bed from exhaustion (he had just finished working a shift).

That storm feels so recent that I have a hard time accepting that we had a lengthy stint without any snow! Record my tushy.

I honestly feel like we ought to be entitled to much more time before we get the first snowfall of this winter season. It hasn’t been long enough since we had to worry about shoveling snow and keeping our walkways clear enough so that we don’t slip and fall on our collective heinies!

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