Up, Up and Away: Teens Feel Pinch of High Gas Prices

By HANNAH KIVI
RIVERSIDE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL
High gas prices don’t only affect adults, they affect teens, too.
“It’s ridiculous,” 19-year-old Ashley Groff says of today’s fuel costs. “My whole check goes to bills and gas.”
The Eisenhower High School graduate works part-time at Baskin-Robbins and often carpools with friends to save money and gas. She says it irritates her when she sees one person driving alone in a car.
“If you are going to the same place, might as well go together,” she says.
Some teenagers are opting to use other types of transportation, such as carpooling, riding bikes or taking the bus, to save money and gas.
Sixteen-year-old Onasis Gatica, a junior at West Valley High School, says she’s been riding her bike or carpooling to the car wash where she works.
Twenty-year-old Jeffrey Cadousteau, an Eisenhower graduate who works at Streamline Shaved Ice, uses his longboard. He also rides it around Central Washington University in Ellensburg, where he goes to school, and often carpools with his friends.
“I save a lot of money,” he says.
Sixteen-year-old Teddy Jones, a West Valley sophomore, says his parents pay for his gas now, but he might soon have to start paying for it himself.
“I’m not really looking forward to it,” he says. “I will probably have to work more hours.”
“We have to conserve as much as we can,” he says.
Gas prices have fallen since the beginning of July. But the state average is still about a dollar more than it was last year. The average in the state for 2007 was about $3.09, according to www.washingtongasprices.com. For July 30 of this year, it was $4.16.
With the rise of gas prices, teen cruising has decreased in parts of the country, according to www.treehugger.com.
According to the Web site, “America’s youth are being forced to seek out other forms of entertainment, such as hanging out in parking lots, malls or movie theaters, and parking their cars and walking around.”
But around here, Capt. Jeff Schneider of the Yakima Police Department says he hasn’t noticed a change in the Yakima Valley’s teen cruising.
“We don’t see cruising like it was 20 years ago,” he says. “But with the gas prices, there hasn’t really been a change.”