New York Takes The Cake

Sometimes it can help to travel outside of our region to gain new perspective of our local opportunities and challenges. Having traveled extensively over the past two weeks into Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is amazing to see how gas prices in New York are so uncompetitive.

On Saturday, November 8th, I paid $2.18 per gallon for gas in Bristol, CT. I was excited to pay such a "low" price. On Saturday, November 15th, I paid $1.97 per gallon for gas in Fitchburg, MA. I later came upon stations with prices of $1.95 and even $1.93 per gallon in Leominster. I saw $1.99 in Holyoke, MA, as I returned to Glens Falls on Sunday, November 16th. As we passed each station, those in the car all talked about the fact that the experts told us we'd never see gas below $2 per gallon again.

Upon returning to Glens Falls, our excitement with declining gas prices faded. We noted one station charging $2.26 and another $2.36 per gallon. That's a 43 cent difference between the high and low that we saw in one day across two states. The fact that our local prices today are still higher than the price in Connecticut we paid more than one week ago is frustrating.

While we at the ARCC are thrilled that gas prices have declined so much in such a short period of time, our state's competitiveness will always be challenged if we consider ourselves lucky to see lower prices when others are blessed with even lower prices than we're paying.