With prices spiking at more than $2.30 per litre this summer, we asked locals if the cost of gas was affecting their road trip plans.
More than 58 per cent of Vancouverites and more than 60 per cent of poll takers said they were curtailing their travel plans when it came to travelling by highway.
According to data from Gasbuddy.com, Vancouver gas prices stayed relatively stable between 2012 and late 2020. Prices peaked above $1.50 per litre a couple of times and were occasionally below $1.05 per litre but they were often between $1.20 and $1.40 per litre. Since the fall of 2020, however, prices have steadily increased with only a few periods where there's been decreases or no increase.
Notably, in early March, gas price increased by about 30 cents in a week when the war in Ukraine began. While they decreased a little shortly after, they rose again starting in mid-April, jumping from around $1.90 per litre to $2.30 per litre in a month.
The highest peak came in early June, when the average cracked $2.30 again. Since then, Vancouver (and the rest of Canada) has seen a moderate decrease. In Vancouver, the average is back to about $2.00 per litre, still the highest price ever in the city aside from the spring.
Vancouver Is Awesome polled 762 Vancouver Is Awesome readers and asked the question: Are gas prices affecting your travel plans this summer?
The poll ran from 6/26/2022 to 7/1/2022. Of the 762 votes, we can determine that 333 are from within the community. The full results are as follows:
Results are based on an online study of adult Vancouver Is Awesome readers that are located in Vancouver. The margin of error - which measures sample variability - is +/- 3.55%, 19 times out of 20.
Vancouver Is Awesome uses a variety of techniques to capture data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots, and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.
