I didn't mean to suggest it's one thing. Countries with expensive gas usually have public transportation, but that's mostly unusable here, and sprawl means affo

I didn't mean to suggest it's one thing. Countries with expensive gas usually have public transportation, but that's mostly unusable here, and sprawl means affordable housing is far from the work, so there's a lot more required commuting for people who would, in Europe, be taking public transport. Gas is $4.80/gallos ($1.26/L) where I am, right now. That's not all that "cheap", even by European standards, when you consider average commute distance is around double (according to a quick search).