WOBURN, MA — High gas prices are adding a new line to the family road trip budget, but they are not keeping Woburn residents off the highway for Memorial Day.
Saving even a small amount per gallon can be meaningful for Massachusetts families, particularly during extensive road trips.
As Bay Staters plan their routes this year, costs could reach as high as $6.14 per gallon for regular fuel in California. The figures come from GasBuddy, a mobile application and website that monitors real-time pricing at individual gas stations throughout the United States and Canada.
The average cost of a gallon of regular gas on Monday was $4.47 following a modest, one-cent drop over the previous week, according to GasBuddy data from more than 12 million individual price reports covering 150,000 gas stations across the country.
Georgia has the cheapest gas in the country at $3.97 for a gallon of regular, while at an average of $6.14 a gallon, California has the most expensive gas.
Using GasBuddy’s national average, a 500-mile round trip in a vehicle getting 25 miles per gallon would cost about $89 in gas, roughly $26 more than the same trip at last Memorial Day’s national average of $3.17.
The cheapest gas prices in Woburn on Wednesday were:
Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, cautioned travelers against waiting until the last minute to fill up before setting off on a Memorial Day trip.
National gas prices fell last week as lower oil prices sparked hope for U.S.-Iran diplomatic progress, he wrote in a blog post Monday, adding that optimism faded after a meeting between President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping failed to yield a breakthrough, and new warnings were issued toward Tehran.
Accordingly, a “sustained increase in oil prices could begin pushing retail fuel prices higher again in the weeks ahead,” De Haan said.
AAA estimates a record 39.1 million people will travel by car during the May 21-25 holiday period. The result of high gas prices isn’t a canceled holiday as much as a reimagined one.
About 30 percent of respondents to a survey for Bank of America’s summer travel outlook said higher gas prices wouldn’t change their plans, while others said they would take fewer trips, choose destinations closer to home or cut back on costs such as accommodations. Lower-income households were far more likely to have no summer travel plans.
An Intuit Credit Karma survey found gas costs are forcing some households to make trade-offs, with respondents saying rising gas prices have led them to sacrifice visits to family and friends, road trips and family vacations.
In a Talker Research survey of 5,000 Americans commissioned by Current, 32 percent of respondents predicted staycations would be the top summer travel trend.
The survey defined staycations as staying within a city or state for a casual trip and returning home to sleep. It also found 22 percent of summer travelers planned more day trips or adventures within their own city or state, and 22 percent planned shorter trips.
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