$8 a gallon doesn't hit anywhere near as hard in Europe. First off, everything is walkable and, except for farmers who are subsidized, driving is NOT a necessity. You can't drive where you buy your food unless you live in a fake, new American style town, and then you just have to deal with buses. And since their continent is the size of the region of the US I live in, that kind of speaks for itself. I drive 25,000 miles a year, mostly in 1,000 mile + trips that are more efficient than flying from the regional airport where I live, to Atlanta, to Orlando and THEN drive two hours to my family's house. Shit, if I don't hit traffic I can almost make it there by the time I would get to Atlanta flying.

I gallavanted across europe for four months and only had a car for the purpose of burning the Autobahn during one vacation, and didn't miss it. (The only times the public transport didn't work was during a strike, or when I shouldn't have been driving anyway) That said, if I lived there permanently I would definitely keep a car because TGV's and ICE are horrendously expensive for what you get and make me personally nauseous.

Where I live in SC is a total fail of urban planning. Its 4 miles roundtrip to the walmart that seems to be next door, its 15 to get to the "downtown" and worse if you want to go sit in traffic where the big box stores are. If gas hits European prices here, it will collapse our economy. If gas hits 5/gallon I'll get a diesel, since my 325xi gets about 15 around town with the 0-55 go around in the southeast, I was licking the single digits when I was driving the X5.

No, I'm not moving to a city, because the metro-card costs a significant chunk of the expense to own a car, and leaves me up shits creek when I want to leave, or when it breaks. I walk instead of taking the NY subways, and I have no issues driving on Storrow drive to avoid the MBTA. Public Transportation in the United States is Geographically impractical.

I'd be interested in seeing where Obama was quoted to say that.