French Life-expat France

OK it’s not just a France problem, it’s everyone, but I thought I’d grumble about the price of petrol.

I have every sympathy with people in the USA who complain that they are paying $4 a gallon - about 50 euro cents a litre. Well, we are paying 1.45 euros a litre, three times as much as you. And of course I have enormous sympathy for everyone who has bought an enormous leisure / four wheel drive vehicle for no good reason at all apart from showing off to the neighbours and now finds they can’t afford to actually drive it.

But meanwhile for a lot of people the price of petrol in France is a real issue. France is a big, largely rural, country and lots of people do live a long way from facilities and have little choice except driving when they need to go shopping or need to get to work. Many people in France are on minimum wage and the cost of petrol is rapidly becoming prohibitive.

So what to do? Well every big black cloud has a tiny glint of something silvery inside it so let’s look for positive suggestions.

- The government will be receiving an enormous tax windfall from the rise in the price of fuel. This will give them the opportunity to invest in a public transport system that actually serves rural communities. Like in the old days! Our local small town has no public transport at all, either for the region itself or to reach the larger towns about 25 kilometres away. I’m sure the government won’t waste this valuable opportunity to get us all back on the buses.

- A loaf of bread in France costs about 1.17 euros - this is equivalent to the petrol cost of driving about 6 km in a ‘normal’ car. Almost everyone in France goes to the bakers every day. So anyone living more than 3 km from the bakers is now paying more for the petrol than for the bread. Lets see a bit of initiative from the bakers - get your vans out and drive around the neighbourhood delivering bread, like in the good old days. Charge us a small delivery charge, we will be happy to pay it.

- Quite a lot of us already do ‘car sharing’ for trips to school - schools are often 15-25 kilometres away. But many people don’t, and a central point for arranging more efficient car shares would be useful. But really a more sensible school bus service would solve the problem. Our children’s school is 12 kilometres away, and the school bus takes one hour and 10 minutes. So almost two and a half hours in the bus each day just to get to the school up the road. The car takes about 10 minutes each way.

I know school buses need to meander a bit, but most of the children are travelling from one town centre to another town centre and don’t need to drive around the countryside for hours first. There should be a second ‘mini bus’ that just drives centre to centre and leaves at a sensible hour i.e. twenty minutes before school starts.

The problem gets worse when elder daughter starts at lycée. The lycée is 25 kilometres away - half an hour in the car. But the school bus takes two hours each way. Err, even I can’t imagine how they get school work done after four hours in the bus each day. So most pupils board at the lycée during the week. Well that must cost someone a load of cash as well, putting up thousands of children every night. So again, let’s hope that some enterprising soul starts a ‘point to point’ bus service, saves petrol, saves time and saves money.

Petrol is going to run out anyway sooner or later so there’s not a lot we can do about that. But I would like to see a concerted effort by governments who are receiving an enormous tax windfall from fuel to spend a bit of their gains on offering us alternatives. And I hope for a few initiatives by enterprising individuals as well - the possibilities are there for those who look for them - but the entrepreneurial spirit isn’t always as it might be in France.

End of grumble. If you are visiting France this year you might like to know that there is a government run website that shows up to date prices for petrol stations across the land - so you can check which is cheapest in the town that you are visiting. The site is at www.prix-carburants.gouv.fr (’SP95′ is standard unleaded petrol and ‘gazole’ is diesel).

Edit: I started out saying the price of fuel is a problem everywhere, which isn’t quite true. The UK and France now pay about $8 per gallon and the US pay about $3.65, but in Iran you can fill up at $0.4 per gallon, and if you don’t mind travelling a long way for your petrol in Venezuela it costs just $0.12 per gallon (source Le Monde). Meanwhile try and avoid hiring a car in Bosnia-Herzegovina this year, where prices are about $11 per gallon.