Which Gulf of Mexico hurricane had the worse impact on gas prices: Ike or Katrina?

So far, Katrina is the winner. But the week is still young.

The Triangle average price for regular reached $4.053 per gallon today, according to fuelgaugereport.com.  That represents a three-day spurt of 36.1 cents, since Friday.

With Gulf refineries still offline after Ike, it's a good bet that prices will continue climbing this week — even as state officials warn against gougers — and we'll break the local record high of $4.054 set on 3 different days in mid-July.

How bad did it get three years ago, and how fast?

At the beginning of September 2005, as Katrina was shutting down the Gulf refineries, prices spiked even faster. The Triangle average hit $3.184 on Sept. 4, 2005 -- a leap of 50.2 cents in 3 days, and 61.9 cents in 4 days.

It's comforting to remember that what goes up eventually comes at least half-way down. Three years ago, the local average fell steadily after the Katrina spike, dropping below $3 after a couple of weeks. It bobbed up again with Rita in October and then dropped 'way on down to $2.069 in early December.  

Gee. When I think of $2 gas, I get all nostalgic inside.

Hurricane Ike has put a premium on regular, and some stations don't have any more regular to sell.

So I thought I was about to get socked in the wallet when I pulled into a Carrboro Kangaroo station this morning. The notices taped to each pump said "Premium only."

These days, premium gas usually costs about 30 cents a gallon more than regular. A lot of stations around town had been selling regular for $4.299 Friday night. The Triangle average price for regular rose by 19 cents overnight to $3.882, and the average for premium rose to $4.198.

But the price for premium at this Kangaroo station was $3.989.

A veritable bargain and, surely, a marketing fluke. Thanks for small favors, Ike.

... regular is selling for $4.76 -- $1.08 above yesterday's Triangle average -- this afternoon at Crown on Raleigh's South Saunders Street.  That's usually the cheapest street for gas in the Triangle.

It's worse in other parts of town: $4.89, $4.99, $5.09 ....

Was it this bad when Katrina hit the Gulf refineries?

Average Triangle prices bounced from $2.682 on Sept. 1, 2005, to $2.916 on Sept. 2 and $3.141 on Sept. 3. 

The Katrina record spike was $3.184 on Sept. 4, 2005.

Remember, those were averages.  Some stations charged much higher prices than that.

As the state DOT prepares to pave Graylyn Drive — a short gravel road that dead-ends at a locked maintenance gate to Umstead State Park — the state Division of Parks and Recreation said today it is considering new Umstead access options that include unlocking that gate and turning Graylyn into a new park entrance. [9/12/8 update: see today's N&O story and map.]

Graylyn became popular in recent years as a parking spot for hikers and bikers who used it for quick access to the park's bridle/bike trails that start near Graylyn.  DOT said last year it would pave the road ("Umstead paving plan means a parking ban"), and it posted "No Parking" signs to get rid of the cars that sometimes lined both sides on weekends.

Park users protested that the DOT move eliminated easy access for many people, especially on workdays and before and after park opening hours.  Graylyn is a few minutes away from the park's formal north entrance off Glenwood Avenue, but the parking lots and trailheads are located a few miles down bumpy gravel roads inside the park.

[Update 6:30pm Thursday] Get official description and maps here or at the Umstead visitor center. Div of Parks and Rec wants public comment by Oct. 10 only on the three alternatives A, B and C. 

Email comments to denr.dpr.media@ncmail.net or post them to:

William B. Umstead State Park
8801 Glenwood Avenue
Raleigh, NC 27617

Here are the three options to improve Umstead (see park planning area map) access:

Alternative A: No change. (See Alternative A map.)

Alternative B: Improve access to the trailheads via the existing entrance road from Glenwood Avenue.  Pave and widen the one-mile gravel road leading to the trailhead parking lot. (See Alternative B map.)

Alternative C: Open the maintenance gate to make Graylyn a new unpaved entrance road to the trailhead parking area. Access from the Glenwood entrance road to the trailhead parking lot would be cut off, to block through-traffic. (See Alternative C map.)

In the further adventures of traffic engineers who design new intersections that look dumb but are supposed to be smart, the Regional Transportation Alliance is hosting a discussion Thursday about something called the quadrant roadway.

Left turns, it is well known, are the scourge of city streets. I turn left, and you wait. Get rid of left turns, and everybody has less waiting.

The quadrant roadway doesn't eliminate left turns, but it moves them out of clogged intersections.  Stay with me on this.

At the main intersection, there are no left turns.  After those green arrows go away, that leaves more solid-green time for everybody else. You stop for the cross street but you no longer stop for left-turners.

So how do you turn left from street A to street B?  You make an extra turn either a block before or a block after the main intersection.

This involves installing extra traffic signals on both streets, but here's the alleged clincher: Even though you go through more traffic lights, you spend less time stopped at red and more time zooming through green.

That's what they say.  Greensboro has one of these odd intersections, and it is claimed to save drivers a collective 150 hours of delay every day.  A few other North Carolina cities are thinking about getting 'em one.

The Regional Transportation Alliance has organized what it calls a solutions forum entitled "Turning Left the 'Right' Way" from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, 800 S. Salisbury St., downtown Raleigh. Experts will be in attendance. Information: 919-664-7062 or stephanie@letsgetmoving.org.

North Carolina is bracing for a drastic reduction in federal road money as the federal Highway Trust Fund veers toward bankruptcy.

NCDOT has ordered a hiring freeze and may have to start delaying or canceling road and bridge projects for which Washington has, in the past, covered 80 percent of the cost.

Brad Wilson, chairman of the state's 21st Century Transportation Committee, says North Carolina should push its congressional delegation for action in Washington.

In recent years, the federal government has sent the state only about 85 cents out of every dollar North Carolinians pay in federal gas taxes. Now, we may get even less, and we may have to wait longer for it.

“We need to understand that our dependency upon the federal Highway Trust Fund may be even more tenuous than we realized, and North Carolina may need to be more aggressive in taking care of itself,” Wilson said today.

“To the extent that we don’t get federal reimbursement, we’ve got to make it up here or do without.”

Wilson's committee, which meets Thursday in Asheville, is preparing recommendations to boost state spending on roads, bridges and buses. Get ready to consider -- but not before the November elections -- new state and local taxes and a big bond issue.

As the Road Worrier reported today ("DMV system to wipe out inspection stickers"), drivers will see changes in the safety and emissions inspection program, starting Oct. 1.

Unfortunately, today's print edition omitted lots of helpful, important details (the technical term for this is: big screw-up).

We've added the missing material as sidebars to the online story, but I'll repeat it below, too. Some readers have asked today about online registration, so I've added info about that below.

The big changes are:
- You won't get a windshield sticker again,
- Your inspection and registration renewal deadlines will be synchronized so they fall in the same month, and
- You'll have to get your inspection before DMV will issue a new license tag or renew your old one.

Keep reading below for details about how the inspection program works now -- and how it will change in the future. ...

AAA Carolinas blames North Carolina's increased highway death toll last year on increases in fatal crashes involving alcohol or motorcycles.

While traffic deaths declined in most states, North Carolina had the biggest increase in 2007 with 1,675 deaths, up 121 from the year before.  AAA says these statistics include:

* A 37 percent increase in motorcycle deaths, up from 138 in 2006 to 189 in 2007.  Motorcycle deaths have been rising steadily nationwide, while other types of traffic deaths decline.

* A 25 percent increase in deaths involving alchol, up from 390 in 2006 to 489 in 2007.

AAA also says the number of drivers charged with speeding increased by 21 percent from 2003 to 2007, but convictions increased by only 6 percent.

“Our criminal justice system has to begin taking traffic offenses seriously,” said David E. Parsons, CEO and president of AAA Carolinas. “Nearly half of all those charged are not convicted, many having their cases dismissed by pleading to a lesser offense to avoid insurance or license points.”

The numbers of Hispanic drivers involved in fatal crashes (306) and in all crashes (25,337) in 2007 were higher than in 2006 — but the 2007 statistics were lower than the same figures for previous years, AAA said. 

In 2004, Hispanic drivers were involved in 27,727 crashes, including 373 fatal crashes, in North Carolina.  Hispanics make up the fastest-growing segment of North Carolina's population, with numbers that increased by 33 percent between 2003 and 2007.

Does John McCain still want to give everybody a three-month holiday from paying federal gas taxes? The McCain-Palin website still says he does.

I checked today after Mary Peters, the US transportation secretary, announced that the federal Highway Trust Fund is running on fumes and will run dry even sooner than everybody expected -- maybe before the end of September. This money comes from federal gas taxes.

In the past, this money covered 80 percent of highway and bridge project costs.

Now the feds say North Carolina's reimbursement for road projects will be cut by 30 to 40 percent. That's a hit of at least $300 million in the coming year, unless Congress comes up with money to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent. ...

This isn't an endorsement. I've never laid a fingerprint on an iPhone. But if you have an iPhone and you need a ride — maybe you could afford gas until you started paying those monthy iPhone bills — maybe you'd like to check out an iPhone app called Carticipate.

It's for finding a rider, or a ride, on the fly. It's either the next big thing or the next goofy thing, or both.

“It’s a new wrinkle on ride-sharing, which basically is mobile
and location-aware,"  Steffen Frost of somewhere in California, one of the creators of Carticipate, said by voice mail.

"Since the phone is location-aware, it already knows where you’re at. You just say where you’re going and it broadcasts that." ...