Gas is more expensive than ever in California.
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A regular, unleaded gallon of gasoline cost $5.07 on Friday, which AAA said was the highest recorded price in the Golden State. California did so a day after San Francisco became the first major U.S. city to surpass $5 a gallon on average, according to GasBuddy.
The Bay Area's average price, as a whole, has surpassed $5 per gallon for the first time ever. According to AAA, Marin ($5.25), Napa ($5.25), Sonoma ($5.23), San Francisco ($5.21), San Mateo ($5.21), Alameda ($5.14), Contra Costa ($5.13), Solano ($5.12) and Santa Clara ($5.11) counties all exceeded the mark on Friday, leaving the epicenter of the national rise in gas prices in the Bay Area.
"I don't think we've seen the ceiling," Patrick De Haan, Head of Petroleum Analysis at GasBuddy, told KCBS Radio on Friday. "In fact, the ceiling could be a couple of weeks away yet, and gas prices could rise another 25 cents a gallon or so before we get there."
De Haan pointed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as "the primary factor pushing prices up" across the country, but California's transition to cleaner, and more expensive, summer gasoline is also having a unique impact upon the state. He said the impact of higher prices already is hitting lower-income households.
With many offices beginning to reopen for in-person work amid a decline in COVID-19 cases, could Bay Area residents start reconsidering their commuting habits due to the high prices? Through the first four days of this week, for instance, BART averaged more than 100,000 riders each day.
"The ridership has now reached some record highs for the year," Chief Communications Officer Alicia Trost told KCBS Radio, noting there was a dip in riders due to the omicron variant's spread. "And of course, we're only in March, so there's a long way to go."
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